Revenge
by ColdYeti
Summary: A new Tenno awakens - that isn't unusual - what is unusual is that he has a second consciousness in his head. That 'accident' holds the key to a plot by the Lotus. But the second consciousness is in control of the body, and his memory is fractured by cryonesia. This is the story of his journey to find himself, what he does not know is that he will not like what he finds. (spoilers)
1. Vor's Prize (1)

My name is Damian Shadow-claw. It always has been. I am not Tenno, I am above them now. And I have only one mission remaining: to destroy the traitor known as 'the Lotus' and save those who were once my brothers from the inevitable betrayal, the betrayal she will bring about!

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Vor's Prize**

"Wake up, Tenno"

I hear the voice in my head again.

Why is it in my head? How is someone else inside my head?

I have no time to wonder as a bright light comes on. I look out and see a wall, on it there is one solitary decoration. A cocoon of gold and glass. The cocoon opens, and a large object falls. Suddenly my vision blurs. I sense the object. It is a figure, human perhaps? No. It appears to be constructed of some form of metal...

Then I realise, the floor is moving up. The floor is moving towards me! I am the object. I see through its eyes, through my eyes, as I instinctively land in a crouch. But the thing, me, I have no eyes... I see from a bit behind my head, watching as though separate.

I am not alone. Four hulking figures stand over me, and then they move aside to allow another figure through. My vision is still a little blurry, but I can make out this one is different from the rest. This one is taller, and it has tubing draped haphazardly across its body.

It speaks: "I see the Lotus has tried to wake you... pity she's too late!"

The figure, a brown monstrosity, walks around out of my field of view. Then I see him attaching a device to my ankle.

"You're my prize now, Tenno"

There's that name again, Tenno. What is a Tenno?

 _You are._

I freeze. Another voice in my head? This one is male, the first was female. But while the first sounded nervous but comforting, this one is anything but. It sounds like a deep hiss, echoing through my mind. It sounds angry, but calculating, perhaps you could even call it noble...

I am?

 _Yes, you are Tenno. We are Tenno. We, or rather I exist only to serve and protect. The Lotus is our guide._

The Lotus?

 _The first voice, the one that awakened you in time to save you._

To save me?

 _Yes. These soldiers, if I can call them such, they are Grineer. They are evil. And they are doing something to our warframe._

To our warframe? So this is what this body is, one of these warframes? And there are two of us in it?

 _Yes, the shroud that protects is the warframe. We are the Tenno contained within. And no, there are not two of us. There is only me. But me is also you. We are one and the same, yet different._

What? You are me? What are you talking about?

 _No time, I will explain later. The Lotus is surging our energy, we must use it to kill these soldiers._

You want me to kill them? I'm good at killing, but why? Uncalled for bloodshed is evil...

 _No, you want you to kill them. Now do it, I will guide you. Watch and learn._

The body, my body, leaps up and emits a pulse violently throwing the grineer across the room. Only one gets up. My body approaches it, and then it raises my hand. A blade of glowing blue materialises in my hand, and I slash downwards as I am propelled forwards. The soldier falls to the ground, in two pieces. My blade cut straight through him? Now this I could get used to... unfortunately the tall brown one is gone. Perhaps I can try it out on him later...

I quickly latch onto the thoughts that prompted the blade to appear. I will it to come into being, and I fly forwards accidentally slashing a crate in two.

 _Good, good. You've learned the first step. Now destroy all the crates you see, many of them contain useful things. Ammunition, health, energy and sometimes even mods._

The voice sounds happy now, a sort of sarcastic, maniacal happy. Clearly, I am not the only one in this body who derives slightly too much pleasure in destroying things. Or maybe, I am the only one in this body, after all the other voice said it was me.

More soldiers rush in, and die within seconds helpless against my glowing energy blade and the speed that comes with it. They appear to be coming through some sort of portal...

Then the portal collapses, revealing a much more rugged corridor. While the corridor is of the same architectural style, gilded gold and white or pale grey everywhere, it has clearly seen better days. Unlike the pristine 'inside' the outside of the portal is covered in overgrown plant life, debris and the walkway has even been sheared in two by some great force long ago...

I rush out, my warframe leaping across the gap with ease. I stop and look back, realising just how far I jumped...

This warframe is incredible...

 _Yes, and that is the least of what it can do. But your energy is no longer surging, you must use it carefully. It's time to find some weapons!_

Now this I like the sound of! I sprint out, slicing through a few more hapless grineer and arrive at a few crates. On top of the crates there is a strange sword – it looks familiar, almost Asian in design, but unlike a katana or tanto – and a sophisticated looking bo staff. I instinctively grab the sword, more blood that way. I was never a fan of blunt weapons in my last life either, if I wanted to bludgeon my victims I could use my fists.

 _Your last life?_

Yes, I was human. I even remember some of it... although it is very foggy.

 _You were human?! That is impossible. Only the Tenno can operate the warframes. And besides, if you are human and I am you, why do I have no memory of being human?_

I remember it! I remember I did something, broke a commandment or something... I was punished.

 _What are you talking about? Whatever, I want to question me on this more later, but for now we have a salvage team to kill. And an Admiral._

 _An Admiral_?

 _Yes, Admiral Vor, one of the Queens' favourites. The one that attached the thing to our ankle. We must kill him._

It sounds eager now, like it is enjoying just thinking about killing this 'Admiral Vor'... But it is me, and I do feel excited. I can just imagine slicing him open with my energy sword, and watching as his scorched intestines fall to the ground. The thought does seem very appealing, although I'm still uncertain as to what exactly this 'Admiral Vor' has done wrong...

After killing an enemy discretely from behind, I come to a chamber with another pair of weapons. There are throwing knives, Kunai – these I recognise – and some form of machine pistol, designed with a curious, but not unpleasant aesthetic. I choose the kunai, and look for straps to attach them. There are none. I am confused, these are clearly holsters, yet they have no mechanism to attach them?

 _Just put them on, they are magnetic. The correct way to put them on is to have them on one's hips, although you may wish to put them on a different way if you prefer..._

How do you know all of this?

 _I am you, and you know all of this..._

I don't, if I did I'd have been able to attach them myself.

Once I get them on, I venture outside again. I look straight into the barrel of a gun!

Crap!

The flash blinds me as it fires. After a few seconds, I regain my vision.

I am not dead, in fact I'm completely unharmed. How is this possible?

 _Your shields, you idiot. They stopped the bullet. Now don't just stand there, your shields can only take so many hits. Kill him!_

I blur through the surprised looking soldier, slicing him clean in half with my energy sword, and continue on my way.

"Good" You are almost at the extraction point. That is the first voice, the one I called the Lotus. She sounds much more relaxed. "I'm sending in the extraction ship"

This sounds good, while both I and the other current inhabitant in my psyche thoroughly enjoy slaughtering the helpless soldiers, I also crave information. And so far I have received almost none. I have a lot of questions for this 'Lotus' woman. I can't wait to see her in person...

I look up as a large vaguely triangular ship flies overhead. I see the landing pad it is going for and run through the overgrown ravine to get to it. I halt in my tracks as a blinding beam of light punctures the ships flank. And as I watch in horror the ship tilts and then descends rapidly, on its side. The subsequent explosion reduces the area to absolute silence. Almost. There is only one audible sound. A maniacal cackling emanating from no other than Admiral Vor!

"You can't fight him now, He is too strong." The Lotus' voice echoes around the inside of my skull. "You'll have to go past him, and get to your old ship."

"Lock down the area, The Tenno is mine!" I hear Vor yell.

Great. So, current situation: I've awoken as some sort of being that has built in shields. I have another equally psychopathic consciousness in my head that is also me, I may be developing multiple personality disorder or something. I'm trapped with a lunatic admiral who wants to kill me himself, and only a sword and throwing knives. Against an army, and army of over armoured degenerating clones, but an army nonetheless...

 _MOVE!_

I leap to one side as a beam from the golden device in the admiral's hand incinerates a large chunk of dirt, right where I had been standing.

 _Block with your sword dumbass, you're going to get us killed._

Seriously? Since when can swords block lasers?

 _Its not a laser, now block!_

I rush towards Vor, deflecting the beam with my sword almost by instinct. It seems natural... I leap towards him, activating my energy sword in mid air...

There's a flash and he is gone! Then I reflexively twist and deflect a beam from behind me with my sword. He teleported?!

 _Yes, he teleported. If we survive I'll tell you how to do it too. For now, lets focus on getting out. See the closing blast door? Your 2 o'clock. Move, before is shuts!_

I hurtle across the ramshackle structures towards the blast door, and slide through with only moments to spare. I hear Vor shouting at someone to open the door. Perhaps I should go...

The troops on the other side of the blast door hadn't heard the commotion, and so somehow remained oblivious till I scooped up an assault rifle, and open fire. Seconds later the last body hits the floor and I continue merrily onwards, having just cheered my self up quite significantly.

The ship, a 'Liset' is hovering over a landing pad, very lightly guarded. Moments later, the last grineer guard dies and I approach the ship.

How do I get in?

 _You ask the cephalon to let you in. His name is Ordis, he was our ship cephalon during the Great War. I remember that much at least._

Ordis? I query. Then I recoil as I realise, I didn't speak. I can communicate telepathically?

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME YOU FILTHY... I.. Are my sensors deceiving me? Operator? You're alive!"

Oh great, another unstable entity that can talk into my head...

 _Oh, shut up me. I thought we were going to have to hack him to get in, so quit being ungrateful and lets go. Also, he's actually speaking through your comms._

Ordis, can we leave now?

"Certainly Operator, just give me a few moments to... SORT MY LIFE OUT... cycle the engines."

The pleasant voice of Ordis, cracked into a quite irate sounding one for a moment there... I wonder if it is possible for one of these 'cephalons' to become mentally unstable, because I'm rapidly beginning to suspect that sane people are all extinct...

The ship made some unhealthy mechanical sounds, then after a small puff of black smoke, stabilised into a steady whining engine sound. A few grineer soldiers took note, but as soon as they came into sight I mowed them down with my 'MK1-Braton' Assault rifle. I had decided that I quite liked it by the time the cephalon told us we were ready to leave. It was fairly good at shredding flesh through the heavy armour the grineer wore, and had a good fire rate – without sacrificing accuracy. The only thing I disliked was how loud it was, I preferred stealth in my old life. I don't remember if I ever got to use it, but I certainly remember being equipped to use it...

What was I in my past life? And what did I do to deserve the punishment I received?

 _Dunno, but we seem like a fun guy. So it was probably something entertainingly violent. And what was your punishment? If you don't mind me asking... I do sort of have a right to know, if this is indeed our past..._

I don't remember, but I do remember it was severe, and it caused public outrage...

 _So, it was a public punishment... we were a criminal, perhaps?_

I do not remember much of my past, but as the ship accelerates out of the atmosphere at insane speeds... I wonder if my past even matters any more. After all, it was in a past _life,_ was it not?

End of Part 1

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **I can see from the traffic graphs that most people are only reading the first few chapters and then leaving the story completely. I apologise if the first few chapters seem a bit boring, but I need to set down some context and background. In later chapters there will be more... interesting things, but in the first few chapters I will be following the quests in the actual game.**

 **Also, I would recommend reading all the chapters because there are hints and clues that help to explain what happens at the end in almost every chapter.**

* * *

 ***Spoilers below***

* * *

 **Finally, for those of you who think the voice in the new Tenno's head is the operator; you're not wrong, but you're not quite right either; there is a lot more to it than that. Stay tuned.**

 **(And a warning at the end: Some of this stuff is based on headcannon, and some of it is an expanded version of some of the theories that were around before the second dream quest. That is all I am saying - no more hints.)**


	2. Vor's Prize (2)

I will destroy the Lotus for what she has done. And I will use any means necessary to achieve my goals! But to be unstoppable, I must make my enemies fear me... More than they already do... I have an idea, but it is risky... All good ideas are.

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Aftermath** (2 standard Earth days later)

Ugh... my head... Why does everything hurt? What on Earth is going on?

"Actually Operator, we are currently in orbit around the planet Mercury, don't you remember?"

Shut up Ordis! What happened, I don't remember anything...

"Well, you saved me on Earth, and then we went and... PILLAGED... acquired, all the modules that were missing from the Liset. Then we freed that... CONVINNING, USELESS... gallant Corpus arms dealer: Darvo. He provided us with locations to... STEAL... find more resources to build the Ascaris Negator. Then the countermeasure set in and you were rendered unconscious."

Ordis' voice changes from adoring to violent, then helpful and then becomes angry thinking about Darvo. Darvo, he was an odd one. But I liked him, he had been helpful. Ordis on the other hand, was just annoying. And unstable.

So... what now? Wait, what countermeasure?!

"Why the explosive of course, you have approximately 1 hour till it detonates, I managed to buy you some time but I can't slow it any more. I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE IT... It was a pleasure working with you operator."

The explosive? How much is it going to hurt when it goes off? More or less than being shot?

"It won't hurt at all Operator, it will however be fatal."

Great... and there's no way to disable it?

"Not that I know of, I am sorry to have failed you operator."

 _Ughhh... can you please shoot that thing. The headache kills..._

Ah, you're back. I did wonder where you'd gone.

 _Yea, I'm back. Whoopity-do. Now, our useless cephalon can't figure out how to get rid of the bomb, but I bet I know who can..._

You have my attention. Go on...

 _Well, how about the guy who put it there? I say we go find him, capture him, and then hurt him until he tells us how to deactivate it._

And what then?

 _Then we carry on hurting him until he dies. Have some fun while we're at it. The lotus will reward us I'm sure, she wants him dead after all..._

Well, I see no major flaws in this plan... Ordis, where can we find Admiral Vor? My feral grin is only in my imagination, but somehow I get the feeling my other self is having similar thoughts.

"I'm afraid I don't know. I do however have the coordinates of a ship that should have his current location in its database."

That'll have to do... plot a course straight to it.

As the ship accelerates to an insane speed, I wonder if I will be able to get to Admiral Vor in time to make any difference. No matter, even if I don't survive, I will at least prevent this fate from befalling others. Vor must die. The other me was right...

Over the past few days we have developed a very... peculiar relationship, we both like the same things, but we differ vastly when it comes to other aspects of our respective personalities. I am choosing to refer to him as a separate entity to make this less confusing for myself. While I prefer tact and guile, he seems to thrive on sadism and violence. While neither of us is exactly saint material, I believe my methods are way ahead of his, by way of morals and results.

Not that I know much about morality. I remembered a few things about my former life, including that I was a psychopath. I had Ordis look that up in the Lotus' archives. It turns out psychopaths tend to have absolutely no concept of morality, but do often suffer other ailments: such as multiple personality disorder, sadism and kleptomania. To name but a few... On every enemy ship or base we have visited, I have ended up stealing literally everything. Emptying lockers, crates, corpses and anything that looks valuable – and then burning anything flammable. My psyche profile is not going to look good...

Fortunately, due to my effectiveness at killing with more or less any weapons, Ordis thinks the Lotus will overlook this behaviour. I hope he's right...

* * *

Upon arriving on the ship, I decided to go for the.. direct approach... so the floor is literally coated in fresh corpses and blood. I'm currently standing in front of a terminal, and wondering if I shouldn't have kept at least one soldier alive to operate it for me...

 _Don't be stupid, the Grineer are genetically engineered to be almost incapable of fear. And they are indoctrinated since birth to never help an enemy of the queens. Your best bet is to hack the data vault._

How? I've never hacked anything in my life.

 _The let me take over for a minute. I promise not to do anything to our body._

Go on then...

Less than a minute later the hack is complete. Okay, it wasn't the most elegant hack. And maybe he did set the alarms off. Twice... but I'm still quite impressed with the other me.

 _Tolstoj sector._

What?

 _Vor is hiding in Tolstoj sector. And you'll be pleased to hear he got demoted, he's a captain now._

So he has less of a bodyguard?

 _Probably... he has certainly been stripped of his elite bodyguard._

Let's get going then. We have 34 minutes and we still need to get there...

 _We seem very calm counting down to our own deaths, do you think that has to do with us being one of these 'psychopath' thingies you were reading about?_

Most likely yes. No emotions make people a lot less prone to panic.

 _I still think it's a bit odd... not that I'm complaining. Lets get to extraction._

Upon arriving at the 'base' I enter via a ventilation shaft, and then tenderly replace the panel I knocked out to minimise the amount of noise. Vor is dangerous, and while I am vastly stronger than before, he is still a threat to be taken seriously. It is to be noted that the 'base' is dug out of an asteroid in orbit of Mercury, with only a few jagged bits of machinery visible on the outside. It is quite a remarkable idea, the only problem is how _badly_ the Grineer have gone about doing it... The floor is littered with broken bits of machinery and rock. So I presume I have landed in a waste section. Sure enough, the doorway ahead of me is cordoned off. It takes a single swing of my skana to remove all the debris that is blocking my route.

I proceed unchallenged for several rooms, until I reach a large one with two columns of smoke rising from below some walkways. I can feel the heat in this room even through my warframe. Having been momentarily distracted by the heat, I neglected to listen for footsteps.

As the Grineer scorpion walks around the corner she is surprised to note that there is a warframe standing barely a meter from her, staring into space. This is obviously too much of an opportunity to pass up, so she takes careful aim and then fires her grappling hook...

I catch the hook in mid air, side on. This surprises both of us, but I recover much faster and deprive her of her chance to recover – with a kunai to the head. Clearly, this body has faster, and more deadly, reflexes than I ever remember having had in my last life... Slightly surprised I continue on, into a much colder room with stone walls. This room is neither quiet nor deserted, in fact, it is so full of Grineer that I decide to switch to my assault rifle before engaging...

30 seconds later I regret it, I'm hiding behind cover as rocket after rocket streaks by over my head. As I engaged, I had fired indiscriminately, unfortunately, I had also failed to notice the Grineer butcher who sprinted for the alarm console. This of course led to more Grineer rushing in, no problem. The problem occurred when 3 of the incoming Grineer turned out to be a troop called 'bombards' – basically, very heavily armoured troops with rocket launchers. So heavily armoured I was having trouble hurting them as most of the few rounds I'd let off before the first rocket hit simply bounced off their armour. Not good. More Grineer were pouring into the room now, firing at me from several angles. I eliminated the ones I could, but was left with no means of destroying the bulk of the defenders. And to make matters worse I was running low on ammunition...

 _So... how brave are you feeling?_

Why do I get the feeling this is another of your bad ideas?

 _Because you know you? The idea is quite simple, you have other abilities than just your slash dash. So you charge in, let the shields take the hits and activate that new radial javelin ability. And then turn off the alarms and..._

 _My train of thought was interrupted by a transmission from Captain Vor:_

 _"I can see you Tenno, nowhere to hide" he exclaimed in a gleefully singsong voice._

Yea, great. Thanks for that valuable contribution Vor, I think to myself. Some of us are being serious. But yes, that is a brilliant idea, other me. How do I use this 'radial javelin' though?

 _I'll do it, just get me close enough. I promise it'll be gory._

I vault over my cover and sprint towards the Grineer, my shield taking a few hits along the way. I leap over a rocket, and land in the middle of the group. There's a flash and then a disgusting tearing sound. Then silence. I look around, at the pile of bodies impaled to the walls of the room. Some of them quite far away... Wow...

 _Isn't it beautiful?!_ Cries the ecstatic voice of my other consciousness in sadistic glee as I turn slowly and take in all of the corpses in their disarray... There were a lot of them, maybe even a hundred. All dead, in a split second...

Enough sightseeing, I move on. Nothing noteworthy happened until I reached this room. This room appears to be carved out of the native rock, but has a large platform in the center along with a few badly built pipes and catwalks. I can see Grineer, several hundred if I'm any judge, but Captain Vor is nowhere to be seen... The target marker shows him as being near the center of the room, but I can see both floors in the center of the room from my position. "How long left?" I mentally whisper to Ordis.

"3 minutes, 12 seconds till detonation. And counting" comes back the chirpy voice of the unstable cepahlon.

I look around one last time. Then I see him, he's talking to a few heavy grineer, so he was obscured from view initially. Now I have him. My HUD indicates that he has shields as well as armour. I'll have to get closer. I leap onto a line of pipes and sneak slowly along till I'm nearly above him.

"2 minutes, 30 seconds" chirps the voice of Ordis

I take aim, and let fly a hail of bullets. Vor barely has time to turn before his shields are gone and his armour is being shredded. Got him.

Then a spherical shield engulfs him. And he begins to laugh... _not good._

"Ah, Tenno. I did wonder if you'd find me. Well, I thank you. I thank you for granting me the pleasure of killing you myself!"

A beam of the same bright golden light hits the pipes I'm standing on, and with a screech of hot metal bending under stress, they fall. I land in a roll and immediately whip out my skana. Vor looks at me for a second and then pulls out a more curved sword. It appears to have been designed with a similar aesthetic in mind though. Where could he have gotten that? Another Tenno? Are there other Tenno?

Our blades clash and the echo rings around the cavern. The soldiers are standing in a circle, some are cheering, most are watching their esteemed leader cross blades with the Tenno. I'm beginning to enjoy this when an annoyingly cheerful voice announces:

"1 minute, 30 seconds remaining till detonation"

Then I raise my sword... the flash of bright light blinds even me for a second.

What did you do?

 _It's called radial blind, it is your second ability. Now get a move on and gut this guy!_

I blur forwards, slashing sideways with my energy sword. Vor screams in agony... and then his armour fuses back together as the same spherical shield engulfs him!

"1 minute remaining till detonation" comes the enragingly cheerful voice of the ship cephalon

I focus and use my radial javelin ability. I am rewarded with a beeping sound.

 _Not enough energy, you have enough for a slash dash, use it!_

I blur towards Vor, just as the shield dissipates... He teleports, vanishing in a shower of golden sparks. I look around in panic. I see him barely 3 meters away. My anger takes control. HOW DARE HE AVOID BEING KILLED!? WHO GAVE HIM THE RIGHT TO LIVE? My vision is enveloped by a red mist as I charge towards him.

"20 seconds left till detonation, you may wish to hurry it up operator" chirps Ordis through my comms.

I attack Vor in a blind fury, ignoring Ordis completely as I slash again and again.

When I'm done, I look up. My vision is clearing... the room is empty. Completely empty. Except for a fallen sword. It is the sword Vor was using...

What? I ask myself in disbelief. Have I died?

 _No, but everyone else did... You my friend, have just discovered the joys of channelling. Something not even all Tenno can master. And you just did it by accident. You may also have just saved us._

Are you sure?

 _Well, the explosive detonates in 5 seconds..._

 _5, 4, 3, 2, time is going agonisingly slowly... 1 … 0_

No explosion shatters my skull. I breath a sigh of relief. Why am I not dead? Answer me Ordis!

"Operator, it appears that when your blade dissolved Vor's body due to the channelling effect, it also dissolved the explosive that was linked to him. I have no reading on any device anywhere near where the explosive was 20 seconds ago. There is however a new cavity where it used to be, I suspect that will hurt for a few days."

 _That was bloody clever, I told you you know how to do this stuff!_

I honestly have no idea what I just did... But here is not the place to figure out. Ordis, set a waypoint to extraction. We're leaving. Also, contact the Lotus, she needs to know we survived. And then I want to see the footage of what just happened, there is no way I just killed a whole room full of soldiers in 15 seconds!

Oh, and tell her Vor is dead. I add as an afterthought, as I jog towards extraction.

End of Part 2


	3. Once Awake

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."  
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I know myself, and I know the true nature of the Lotus – hence I need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Not that it will take that many, I intend to make one decisive strike to liberate my brethren.

* * *

 **Loose Ends**

The other voice in my head has taught me meditation, in the hope our combined focus will bring back the memories of my 'past life'. I am certain I had a life before I was Tenno, my other personality is certain I didn't. I kneel in the sieza position, as I have for hours, as my brain scours what is left of my memory. Which isn't much... Cyronesia is apparently to blame. The gilded cocoon in which I awoke had kept me asleep for centuries, unfortunately it had also shredded chunks of my memory.

So, how did you know that those soldiers were Grineer? If you are me, and the last thing I remember was being imprisoned...

 _Well, the last thing I remember was getting into the cryopod... I have no memories of being arrested, imprisoned or punished. Unlike you._

Are you sure we are the same person?

 _Yes! We both control the same body. Additionally, when you focus I see your memories. So they are likely shared._

You do?

 _Yep, when you focused a minute ago, I figured out what that 'commandment' you broke was._

Oh? Do tell.

 _You referred to it as 'the 11_ _th_ _commandment' "Do not get caught, ever."_

Yea... I agree ruefully. That sounds like something I'd go with. So... now that our life is no longer in danger... do you remember when you promised to teach me to teleport?

 _I did not promise. Nor am I sure I'd trust you with that information! Can you imagine the havoc you'd cause?_

Is it even possible? Or were you just trying to get me moving?

 _Well... it is possible. But you need to be channelling your power through certain conduits, and there are conditions..._

Do I want to know? And what 'conduits' are you talking about?

 _A warframe is a conduit for our power. A Loki or Ash warframe will allow you to teleport. But neither is exactly easy to come by... and both are very much stealth frames... we want heavy warframes, we want the enemy to notice us – so we can see the fear on their faces before they die!_

You really disturb me sometimes...

 _Come on, a heavily armoured warframe has a lot of advantages as well... Aside from the whole terrified faces deal._

Like what?

 _Well, they're heavily armoured – obviously – so they can take a lot more hits before you get hurt. Then they can also go solo on missions, so you can avoid socialising._

I can't speak! How on Earth would I socialise?

"Operator, we are still orbiting Mercury. We are nowhere near Earth."

Shut up Ordis!

 _You do realise all other Tenno can communicate telepathically, don't you?_

So there are other Tenno?

 _There were when we entered the cryopod... whether there are any left alive and awake is a different question... I don't remember where the rest of our fire-team slept, but those three must be around somewhere..._

Any suggestions for finding them?

 _Just follow the screams, explosions and chaos. If it isn't them, it'll be someone equally awesome... or infested._

Infested? What are infested?

 _They were a virus, an Orokin super weapon. They were released to counter our enemy... But last I hear they were contained... shame, they always made everything more gory._

A virus? Like a bioweapon? Like anthrax or something? And do I even want to ask how they made everything 'more gory'?

 _No, no. The virus enters the body of the victim and then it circulates throughout the entire body via the bloodstream. From there it adds new DNA to the existing cells, and has them reproduce. It them messes with the assorted hormone glands and so the body begins to grow at a rapid pace, usually infested just get swellings and stuff. Sometimes these contain volatile gas, and they explode! But sometimes, they just get extra eyes on the tumours. However, the virus can form around armour and equipment. I once saw a marine, who's faceplate had grown into his face because of the disease. Looked cool, I wonder what it'd do to the modern Grineer armour... And I'm pretty sure it can occur with larger things, I remember seeing another guy, who fell asleep against a wall after infection. He literally grew into the wall, and we didn't notice him at first because he couldn't detach himself. Scared the willies out of us that hadn't seen such before. And..._

No, stop! I don't want to know any more. And that mental image you just sent me has made me want to puke... They are definitely sealed away now, aren't they?

 _Yup. If they weren't, the whole system would be overrun. The grineer died in droves whenever it got loose, and we saw live un-infested Grineer earlier today. So it can't be loose...shame..._

So... How dangerous was the virus? Do you remember?

 _Well, it generally wiped out a colony or facility before anyone could react. But once the proper authorities were informed, they sent us Tenno in. And I remember hearing of one brother falling to a particularly nasty infested thing, Lephanta-something, but for the most part the fighting is very one sided. WE almost always win, The only exception I recall was the Lephantis. An experimental weapon form made by the Orokin empire, bloody huge one from what I recall. Unfortunately, they forgot to put in a control mechanism and it went rampant._

They FORGOT to put a control mechanism into this giant Lephanti-thingy?!

 _No. It just obviously didn't work._

And there's definitely no infested around? None at all?

 _Nope. Why, you wanna meet them?_

NO!

 **Once Awake**

"Tenno, we have a problem!" The Lotus' Voice rang sharply through my mind, I still wasn't sure how she could do that...

"How may I serve?" I reply, formally, through the now open mental channel.

"We have intercepted Grineer communications that suggest they are experimenting with some sort of bio weapon, you must investigate."

"Do I have a target?"

"Yes, a man by the name of Dr. Tengus in the M Prime sector of Mercury" The Lotus cut the channel and all was silent.

 _Ordis, set a course for Mercury_

"Right away operator"

 _ETA?_

"7 minutes"

* * *

"What. On Ea- On Mercury. Is. That?!" I ask incredulously looking down at the fleshy gunk I have just landed in. It is a sort of grey with luminous red bits and it appears to be stretched over the floor...

My thoughts are disrupted by the manic cackling of my other conscious!

"What?" I snap at him, inside our head "What is it now?"

 _Well, guess who's having nightmares for a week?_

"What?"

 _Duck_

I do instinctively and slash upwards with my one of my new 'Ether swords', which are phenomenally sharp. Sure enough a splash of blood lands on me, but the blood... it is... different, thicker more viscous than any blood I knew. And then I look to see what I killed...

"Is that...?"

 _Yup, infested. Someone has set them loose. Bloody Grineer, always breaking things..._

"Is it possible for me to throw up inside my helmet? Because I'm feeling really light headed right now..."

 _No, don't even try. Also, keep moving, there are likely more where that came from... hopefully._

"Hopefully?!"

 _Yup, infested are great. Only enemy that you can go all out on using only melee weapons. And melee weapons means more guts and screaming. From them of course._

"You worry me sometimes... Which is worrying bearing in mind that you're me... so, _I_ worry _myself_ sometimes?"

 _Relax, we're all crazy in here._

"Please tell me that the infestation can be cleaned out and exterminated, because I never want to see another one. And there's probably a whole base full of them in here from what you've told me about them..."

 _Yea... They can be completely exterminated. But all it takes is for a single spore to be carried out on one of the clean up crew and the whole thing starts again. Best bet is fire and disposable drones. I wonder, is there a sentinel with a flamethrower?_

"NO! I don't trust you with my sanity, let alone a flamethrower!"

I pause, then leap up and balance myself on a bit of stringy flesh as two Grineer approach.

"The scans show a Tenno, he should be around here somewhere..." The first speaker is female, but has the most gravelly voice I have ever heard on a woman. She seems nervous, not very stereotypical for a Grineer...

"Wait" The second soldier, a heavily armoured one commands, before listening to the comm unit in his helmet.

"Dr. Tengus orders, the infested specimens are loose. They take priority, leave the Tenno. It probably doesn't have any idea what it's just put it's foot in."

 _Nope, we know. It was infested gunk. I'm just glad he hasn't looked down, the footprints are still in the fleshy surface. We landed hard._

Fortunately, the infested charger that had leapt at us has dissolved or something. So there's no trace of it.

"Tenno, did he say 'The _infested_ are loose?" The Lotus' voice sounds a bit higher pitched than usual.

 _Affirmative_

"Then it is more important than ever that you finish your mission. Leave no survivors."

With that the channel closes.

"Does she watch me all the time or something? And isn't that a bit creepy?"

 _Yes, she does. No-one knows how._

* * *

I slash at a pair of chargers that go for my head, and then slash dash through a couple of volatile runners. Fortunately, they don't explode. Apparently they do if you shoot them. I do not want to see that happen...

I sprint towards the third data vault as a large, sinuous infested with tentacles instead of a face steps out and backhands me. From several meters away! The extending tentacle catches me completely off guard and throws me off my feet, then my HUD is flickering and I feel strangely empty.

"What the heck?"

 _That's an ancient disruptor. It has disrupted you, its what they do. The strange feeling is your body reacting to having absolutely no void energy, it will recover._

 _"_ What about my HUD?"

 _Your HUD has been hit by a magnetic effect. Magnets and computers don't mix! See it's already gone, now kill it. Tentacles and legs are its weak spots._

I step forward, slashing precisely at its legs and what is left of the poor man's face. The 'ancient' howls in pain and then collapses, with a certain finality that tells me it is definitely dead. To confirm my suspicions it glows a sort of orange, and then deteriorates before my eyes! In seconds, nothing is left except a few wisps of infested spores wafting in the air... Time to move, the strange feeling of emptiness is fading fast now, but my energy bar isn't filling up. Whatever that was, I do not want to be hit by one of these things again...

The third data vault yields its information after only a few seconds of my other conscious beating the keys of the terminal. He's getting much better at hacking, he hasn't set off a single alarm, although that may be because these data vaults don't have any alarms to set off...

"It is worse than I thought." The Lotus' sudden appearances in my mind are a bit perturbing, but there's no way anyone else can hope to track them, so for now they will have to do...

"There is a ship headed for a colony, it has infested aboard. You will need to exterminate everything on it. Then we can re-route it into the sun. Cephalon Cordylon and I are still trying to decode Dr. Tengus' Messages. We will be in contact."

I stare into space for a moment in shock. A ship. Filled with infested. Heading for a colony of innocent people who have no defence and no warning... Sheesh, I'm not exactly prone to acts of compassion, but the Lotus is right: That ship cannot be allowed to reach the colony.

"Ordis, we're going straight to that ship, as soon as I reach extraction"

"Certainly Operator" comes Ordis' reply in that equally annoyingly cheerful tone. At least he isn't glitching any more. I need to see about getting his audio output modified, if that's possible...

As I round the last corner I see the extraction point; a set of one-man airlocks along a wall. I also see several Grineer survivors who have formed a shield wall of sorts in a choke-point and are firing into the mass of infested that are swarming on the other side of it. The veritable sea of flesh is writing with waves of blood. Every time an infested dies, it's kin try to use its body to climb up over the shields, but the bodies disintegrate so quickly that all it results in is more chaos and turmoil. I see a figure on the other side of the shield wall, he is commanding the soldiers. He orders two heavy gunners up onto crates so that they can fire over the shield wall, and he has them targeting the volatile runners, stopping them before they can get close enough to be a threat.

"That must be Dr. Tengus..."

 _Indeed. How accurate do you think you can be while running?_

"While running?"

 _Look behind us_

I look, and see several ancients – literally about seven of them insofar as I can tell through the mass of other infested that are pouring into the corridor with them through the air vents – and all of them are heading for me. I can't tell if they're looking at me, because I can't see any eyes on their bodies. Not that I want to, looking into the eyes of a frightened human is one thing (not a disagreeable thing either, I'm nowhere near as sadistic as my other consciousness, but there is a certain feeling of superiority when another fears you so openly), looking into the eyes of a frightened being that used to be human – and is still conscious - as his new form moves without his permission carrying it's unwilling passenger to feed on what may once have been his friends and family... That is just too much. This infestation must be eradicated! This is too harsh a fate even for Grineer...

Regardless, I run. As I approach the shield wall, I leap onto a wall and open fire as I run along it. Tengus' limp body hits the floor with a satisfying thud, a thud heard clearly in the sudden silence. The infested are no longer fighting. The Grineer have stopped firing. Both factions stare at me as I fly past them... and then both factions break ranks and - pouring over each other as they do - run in pursuit of me! That is when I hear it:

 _Come, Tenno. Join us. You will make us whole again. We need you, we need to consume you! Assimilate!_

I quickly block out the infested and their insanity. I have no intention of being consumed, regardless of who it will 'make whole again'... Urgh

I slide into the correct airlock, and as the Liset detaches, I watch as infested and Grineer fly out of the airlock – having been literally sucked out by the sudden decompression – and explode. The lightly armoured Grineer, who's armour isn't vacuum proofed literally have their insides sucked out of their mouths by the vacuum of space. The heavier Grineer are spinning helplessly. Zero-G combat is not something the Grineer really expected to have to use. So it wasn't included in the standard training. The infested... They are only flesh, but they are holding together really well... A few colourful intestine soaked external implosions nearby make me reconsider that statement. My other conscious is crying in happiness, as we watch the last few infested – no longer able to hold their breath against the incredible force of the vacuum – implode in a spectacularly grotesque fashion.

"You're fucking mental!" I growl at the other inside my head. He responds by switching to maniacal laughter. Maniacal laughter that carries on in my head as we reach the plague ship... and continues as I slice and shoot and rip my way through hundreds of the abominations once aboard. His laughter continues even as I step into the airlock, satisfied that nothing on this ship has enough parts left to reroute the ship – away from it's heading of fiery doom. I don't care. The sooner the infestation is wiped out completely from this universe... The sooner I can sleep peacefully.

The faces of the runners I had seen had been terrified – the ones that could still speak had begged me to end them – even as they clawed at my throat! I was glad that most of them had been wearing those boxy helmets. The few that hadn't been would probably give a lesser man severe mental scarring... Come to think of it, I should check if _I_ hadn't received any mental scars from those two missions... But at least the colonists were safe. And the infested threat was stopped... for now.

* * *

"Tenno. The threat is not gone. While you were busy, the infested succeeded in getting onto three other ships. They are all headed for the colony" The Lotus did not sound happy. Not because I had done anything wrong, but simply because the problem was rapidly getting too big for one Tenno to handle. Killing machines we may be, but even the best killing machine can only be in one place at one time. And if there were three ships?

"What?! I thought I destroyed all of them at Dr. Tengus' facility..."

"You did. But the spores can spread through the vacuum. When you tore them out of the airlock they sprayed the spores in every direction. We're going to have to do something I had hoped we wouldn't..."

 _Nukes? I love nukes! All the fire and the screams, the destruction..._

SHUT UP! Your Maniacal cackling has been nothing but a hindrance for the past hour!

 _Aww... But you have to admit. The look on those infested's faces when we sucked them out the airlock was priceless. 10/10 would do again. And again. And again..._

My other consciousness is almost childlike in his feigned disappointment. We both know that actually, he would much rather eradicate a colony using a blunt knife than a nuke. Simply because it would be more gory and more terrifying, for them. Oh, and then he'd probably hunt the few survivors for days – enjoying every moment of their fear and grief... But I'm getting distracted.

"Lotus. Would a nuke even work? Would the radiation be enough to destroy the spores?"

"No. We need to use something a little bigger. But I'm afraid It will also kill the colonists..."

"Is there any other alternative?" I ask hesitantly.

"No. It will likely hurt you too... It won't be pleasant." The Lotus is apprehensive. I can tell she doesn't like the idea of putting me through unnecessary pain.

"I don't care. The infestation has to be stopped!"

"Very well. Are you familiar with the concept of a 'cascade bomb'?"

"Never heard of it"

"It charges up and then releases a pulse of void energy. It will destroy all organic matter within a large radius. It will take out all three ships. The colony, and potentially half a fleet of Grineer galleons or so. Unfortunately it is very vulnerable when charging up. You will need to protect it"

"But, if it destroys all organic matter... won't it kill me?"

"It won't kill you, or anything else that is capable of channelling raw void energy. It will however, hurt. A lot. You may be rendered unconscious for quite some time, but your warframe will dissipate the excess void energy relatively quickly."

"OK. What do you need me to do?" A few hours of self induced sleep – painful sleep but sleep nonetheless – seems like a very small price to pay for the extermination of the infestation.

* * *

As I cut down the last remnants of the infested's suicidal charge towards the bomb, I ask myself for the millionth time if this is really a good idea. The I answer my own question for the millionth time: If it rids the system of the infestation, it _is_ worth it. No matter the cost. The bomb is nearly charged. I can tell without looking at the timer, because the bomb is positively glowing now. Not in a 'warm and fuzzy' way, more of an 'impending doom' kinda way.

The Lotus is busy trying to divert as much traffic away from the sector. The bomb has a specific radius, but the energy will be amplified by any organic matter it destroys. Meaning, if things go really badly, a chain reaction along a crowded shipping lane could well claim the lives of millions more. Some would be Corpus, or other criminals and cultists - but most would be innocent traders.

The I feel her presence. "Are you ready Tenno?"

"Yes. Do it" I say, determination steeling my voice. I look around the large cavern I am in, and watch, barely surprised, as the infested mass in the shadows in preparation for yet another suicidal charge. They don't seem to learn much...

And then my world goes red. White hot agony arcs through my body, and I try to scream. I fail. The helmet of my warframe doesn't allow jaw movement. But I scream in my mind. Then I recoil in horror as I hear a matching scream coming from my other consciousness, and the throats of every living thing within 700,000 kilometers of the bomb. How?! Only Tenno and infested can access the telepathic channels, yet I can clearly hear the screams of over a million colonists as their cells are torn to pieces by the raw energy the bomb is emitting! I can hear Grineer, roaring in agony. I can hear the infested's screeches and screams of rage and pain. I can even hear the dying moans of some of the larger creatures that live on the terraformed surface of Mercury. Then as all the screams rise to a horrifying crescendo... I black out. Finally!

End of Part 3


	4. A Mysterious Rescue

Under the banner of the Lotus, the Tenno are made to slaughter innocents. I did not understand, did the Lotus not know that every reactor she had us destroy killed civilians as well as combatants? Now I understand; she – it – knew all along, but she knew the Tenno were killers, and she knew they could never reach their goal. She had to stir up the factions by killing their civilians, if she did not peace _might_ have been achieved. But if there was peace the Tenno would no longer fight, they would think. And when they thought they would find answers, answers the Lotus could not let afford to let them find.

* * *

 **A Mysterious Rescue  
**

"Tenno, can you hear me?" My brain can recognise that the Lotus is concerned. Why is she concerned? I did my job and I survived. All is well, isn't it?

"Just" I reply mentally. At this point I'm glad for the telepathy, I don't think I could move my mouth enough to articulate speech. My body is paralysed, it will be till the warframe dissipated the excess void energy.

"Are you alright? Your vitals are stable, but something looks... off."

"I'm alive. I am paralysed till my warframe sheds the excess energy. That is all"

"Paralysed? That's not right... You shouldn't be paralysed... Aching all over yes, but not paralysed..." She sounds genuinely confused, this is probably not a good thing...

 _The all knowing Lotus doesn't know what's happening... This is really not good..._

Would it be possible for you to change your tone? So that only the part of the sentence intended to be sarcastic actually sounds sarcastic. Because this really is **not** good...

 _You're always so particular. You knew what I meant, so why complain?_

Because one of these days, I'm going to be focusing on fighting and you'll give me some advice sarcastically, and I won't be focused enough to realise you're being sarcastic and it'll get us killed.

 _Really? Got any examples in mind?_

If we're fighting infested with a glaive, and you sarcastically suggest I throw it to hit an ancient. That'd get us killed because we'd be defenceless at close range until it returned.

 _No it wouldn't, we could just beat the infested down with out hands._

Really? Chargers are usually the first ones to get close, and they usually have a segment of Grineer armour protecting their upper half. **Steel** Grineer armour. Our punches would have no effect whatsoever!

 _...OK. I'll give you that one. But that's unlikely to ever happen, where would we even get a glaive from? I haven't seen one for centuries!_

Is there not a blueprint on the black market?

 _Nope. There's a 'platinum only' deal, which if I recall correctly, means that you get a pre-built glaive._

Well, we don't have platinum, but if we did we could just get that then. So it's not too implausible.

 _No, no. You don't get it. It's pre-built. It's also Pre-used, and sometimes even has an Orokin catalyst pre-installed. By it's previous owner!_

You're saying, we'd be using a dead man's weapon? So what?

 _No, not a dead "man's" weapon. Only the Tenno make and use glaives. We'd be using a weapon, taken from one of our dead brothers or sisters. Likely killed while they were in cryo-sleep. It would be a very disrespectful and dishonourable thing to do. We may not exactly be upstanding, moral galactic citizens, but we do respect our own!_

Oh...

 _Yea. And the Lotus would probably have a fit anyway... speaking of the Lotus, she's being awfully quiet..._

"Tenno, we may have a problem..."

 _Speak of the devil and she shall appear..._

What?

 _Old saying._

"What kind of problem?" I intentionally let a hint of unease slip into my mental voice.

"Have you had any... other issues?"

"Like?"

"Inability to move at times, hearing voices, seeing things or coughing up blood..."

"Nope, only voice I've been hearing is my guide. And he's really annoying."

 _Hey, show some respect! Without me you wouldn't even know how to talk to her._

"'Your guide'?" The Lotus sounds really uneasy now.

"Yes, the one who helped me when I awoke, the one who does the hacking and uses the abilities... is something wrong?"

"Um... Tenno, Tenno do not have 'guides'..."

"WHAT?!"

"You will need to come in to a relay for a full scan, it may be a lingering effect of that ascaris thing! The last thing we need is for you to be hearing the instructions of Captain Vor..." She sounds... not quite scared, more a combination of scared and angry.

"Certainly, but right now I can't even move. Any suggestions?"

"I'll activate your distress beacon. Hopefully it will wake one of the nearby Tenno and they can come to your aid."

I feel, no, I sense a signal emitting from the back of my helmet. It fluctuates and undulates, and I cannot focus on the wavelength because it keeps changing... Fascinating. I still cannot move, and the telepathic channel has been cut. So I wait. There's nothing else I can really do.

* * *

I meditate for an hour, and then I try to move parts of my body to see if I am regaining any movement. I'm not. I meditate for another hour, still no movement. Another hour, still no movement! I'm about to re-enter my meditative state for the third time when I see something! A flash of red? Infested? No, the infested are all dead. The cascade bomb ensured that... but what was it then?

"Can you hear me?"

I jerk in surprise as a soft voice comes through my auditory receptors. It seems to be coming from behind me. I certainly can't see the speaker.

"Yes" I reply, telepathically.

"Can you move?" The voice is gentle, soothing, female. This woman's voice reminds me of the Lotus a bit, but it is almost _more_ caring.

"No. The cascade bomb has disabled me somehow. Who are you?" Its odd, she is speaking, and I am thinking into her head. To anyone listening, it would seem she is talking to herself...

"I am not important. I am simply here to help. Are you aware of any reason I can't move you?"

"Other than the fact that I'm in a warframe that probably weighs as much as you do, not including my weight? Nope. IF you can, then please _do_ move me."

I see her step into my field of view. She's wearing some sort of body suit. It is black, but has stripes of blood red. Probably the flash of red I saw out the corner of my eye, I realise.

She waves to someone in the distance, and then four other black and red suited people emerge from the shadows. Wow, even I couldn't detect them, and my warframe's sensors are back online and I was searching to find the flash of red... That's kinda worrying.

The four men, I can tell by their physique, move in sync and bend down to lift my warframe. Whoever they are they are organised, and quite strong. In my warframe I am still a lot heavier than what four average strength men could carry...

"OK, we're probably going to have to knock you out for a bit... is that alright with you?" the leader (atleast, I assume the woman to be the leader) asks me.

"Go ahead" I say, and I'm about to add an 'if you can' to the end of that reply, when she puts a finger to the side of her head. Suddenly I feel very fatigued, and I realise all of the pain has taken its toll on me, as I slip into peaceful sleep...

 _Did she just knock us out?_

 _Hello? Oi! Me, are you even listening?Oh..._

 _Wow, whoever she is... she's gotta be quite good to knock out a Tenno... And did she do that using her mind? Is she a psychic? Wow..._

* * *

"Tenno? Tenno, can you hear me?" Lotus' voice is echoing through my psyche, sharply.

"Yes, I hear you Lotus" I reply, slightly snappier than I should have

"What happened?" She almost demands "You started meditating, and when the other Tenno operative arrived you were gone! And then you showed up here at Larunda Relay. And none of the Guards saw you arrive!"

"The men in the red and black body suits... they rescued me."

"What men in red and black bodysuits?!"

"I dunno, the woman showed up first and then she called the men over to carry me... I get the feeling she was the most dangerous of them, and she was scouting ahead to see if it was clear."

"These... 'men in red and black bodysuits' what did they look like? Were they armed?"

" _Chill Lotus, the poor guy's just woken up after being hit by a cascade bomb. Give him a minute to order his thoughts."_

"Who on Earth are you?!"

 _"The aforementioned 'guide', and no I have absolutely no idea how I ended up inside this lunatic's head. But I am sure I am_ _ **not**_ _a product of that ascaris thingy!"_

"This... this is unprecedented... do you have a a name?" She sounds about as confused as I feel...

" _Nope. But I guess we are going to need names to distinguish ourselves... any suggestions? It's not like we can just call ourselves 'one' and 'two'..."_

"How about 'Alpha' and 'Beta'? Greek for 'one' and 'two'?" she says speculatively.

" _Yea why not. I guess I'm gonna end up as Beta though..."_

"Yes, the one who controls the body is Alpha. Is he still paying attention?"

"Yes, I am. Just thinking..."

"So, Beta... is it possible for you to somehow mask your psi signature? I think we should probably still do that scan, since you're already here and all... and it'll get even more confusing if we get two intermingling sets of brain patterns"

" _Certainly"_ Beta replies

I get the feeling that this is not going to get any less confusing... but I follow the relay guard as we head to the medbay. For some reason the door is red - 'locked', but once we pass the elevators he touches the side of his head and it unlocks.

Beta? Is everyone here psychic?

 _No. Human psychics are quite rare. They're yet another product of the Orokin messing with stuff they shouldn't really mess with... but only a few have the genes to allow them to use their powers. The Tenno are psychic by default, since we have a modified brain structure specifically to allow us to be psychic._

I see... So that woman...

 _Yes, she was very powerful, even for a psychic. I'm not sure you could have withstood that sleep pulse even if you had your defences up..._

My defences?

 _Yea. Psychic defences. The Orokin built them into the second gen Tenno after the sentients were discovered to be capable of using psychic attacks._

Second Gen?

 _Yea. The Orokin made the primes. But each prime took a long time to produce. And each new one took a long time to design. They had a set of the lower guardians' scientists start work on 'second gen' Tenno. These Tenno had to be able to adapt to any warframe. If a prime came their way, they should be able to use it. But they should be equally capable of using a basic frame. And then right at the end of the design process, there was the battle of Outer Terminus. The sentients unleashed psionic attacks that absolutely devastated the Tenno. I remember hearing about it. One Tenno, could usually take ten or twelve sentient drones. At that battle, there was a sentient carrier, so maybe 20,000 sentient drones and 40,000 Tenno, Elite Tenno, better trained and armed than even some of the royal guard. They were defending the Emperor who had gone to watch the Elite's Parade. None returned._

What happened?

 _The sentients used psychic and psionic attacks. First they made the Tenno turn on each other, and then they ripped the survivors apart limb by limb. However, a few were unaffected, it didn't save them. 300 survivors vs 20,000 sentient drones was never going to end well. These 300 were the half-Tenno. Psychic humans who wore warframes. It was discovered that they all saw what was happening, and used a psionic power to block out the fear so that they could say goodbye to their families. That blocking power turned out to be a lot more powerful than anyone imagined... So were were built with that in mind. Our brains are closer to human, specifically so that we could use that blocking method._

So the emperor died?

 _Nope. He escaped. Along with two advisors and three journalists. If anyone there was truly expendable it was the journalists, and they survived!_

So, once we had psychic defences everything was alright?

 _No. Far from it. We Tenno had psychic defences. The emperor did not. He was assassinated using a psionic attack. And then the Tenno had to learn how to protect other people psychically as well..._

Who killed him? A sentient?

 _No. some crazy man in the crowd. He kept yelling about getting revenge for some girl called 'Margulis' or something... Kerry shot him once she traced the attack back to him. It did_ _ **not**_ _go down well with the media..._

Do you know anything about this 'Margulis'? Was she anyone important? Her name sounds familiar...

 _Not that I recall... some sort of scientist or something... I get the feeling I knew her... But I don't remember... I should remember..._

You met her?

 _I think I knew her... I'm getting the feeling she was someone important to me, to us, but I honestly can't remember..._

The doctor and the guard lower me onto the scanner and then the doctor, a kind-looking old guy with greying hair, ask us to relax and meditate. I do.

* * *

"Ah, he's awake." The doctor says to someone I can't see, but I _can_ sense. She appears to be a nurse of some description. "Everything's good Tenno, you have no abnormalities. The Lotus asked to speak to you as soon as you awoke. Would you like me to show you were the viewpoints are?"

"The viewpoints?" I ask him mentally

"Just kneeling pads by the windows, good for meditation or relaxation. Also good if you need to focus on talking to someone..."

"Thank you, I'll follow your lead" I think to him

We walk out of the medbay, past several empty rooms and over to a large window. It is probably shielded on both sides. And as promised there are three Tenno style kneeling pads. I kneel and search for the Lotus as the doctor returns to his ward.

"Lotus, do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you Tenno. Proceed"

"I was told you wished to speak to me?"

"Yes, I still want to know about these men in red. They are a mystery... and I am slightly concerned... They appear to be human, but they succeeded in sneaking past security and the perimeter patrols and left you by the monument in the centre of the relay. We know they arrived in your ship, but the cameras don't show anyone coming or going once it landed. We did see another ship, a red and black grineer dropship, that sped through the docking bays and seemed to pick something or someone up on one of the landing platforms."

"Well, I can tell you they definitely weren't Grineer, they wore bodysuits rather than armour, they could sneak well and they looked like they had normal human physiology. Although they did seem quite strong..."

"That... helps, but doesn't narrow it down much... perhaps they were Grineer special forces... but then why would the nightwatch corps _help_ a Tenno... no, they wouldn't... but then who could they be?" The Lotus thought out loud. "This is something we will need to look out for, if they contact you, let me know discretely."

"As you command"

End of Part 4


	5. The Red Veil

Due to the Tenno's actions, on the orders of the Lotus, there can never be a normal peace. The Grineer hate the Tenno for killing their slaves – in Grineer society one of the most humiliating things is for a soldier to have to work. The Corpus hate the Tenno for killing their civilians, their medical personnel and their innocent technicians – all had families in the colonies. Even the Infested hate the Tenno, for destroying their hives. When a member of a hivemind dies, all members of the hive can feel their pain, their despair, and their sorrow at not being able to protect the weaker forms. The Lotus has made all the factions hate the Tenno. And the Tenno _were_ the only faction with enough leverage and neutrality to broker a ceasefire. Not anymore. Now there can only be one kind of peace: The peace that comes after a war. One faction must prevail, it will cost millions of lives, but it **must** be done.

* * *

 **The Red Veil (Spectres of Liberty)**

"Lotus?" I have tried to open a telepathic channel to the Lotus, but I'm not sure it will work…

"Yes Alpha, what is it?" Ah, it did work. Question time.

"When I spoke to you at the relay, you mentioned I was gone when the 'other Tenno operative', do you mean another literal Tenno? Or just someone who works for us?"

"I meant a Tenno, he is currently on a mission. Would you like to speak to him when he returns?"

"I'd like to request to speak to him. Will he be allowed to know about my… predicament?" I'm unsure of how to behave around another Tenno especially as I have no memory of being one… but I have no intention of letting Beta control my body. I have a lot of questions and I still don't trust him.

"He has agreed. He will come to Larunda Relay as soon as he finishes his mission."

"Thank you Lotus"

* * *

Shortly afterwards a second Liset pulls up and docks on the relay's hangar platform. There are many platforms but currently the entire relay is housing only two Liset… The scale of the place is astounding. The relay itself doesn't look so big from the outside, but then again, my Liset doesn't look as big on the outside as it does on the inside…

The airlock spins and a second Tenno steps out, he too wears a warframe, but I can't tell what kind it is.

 _That? That is a Rhino Warframe. One of my favourites. Very heavily armoured, and it has some very useful abilities…_

Ah. Thanks. How do I address him?

 _Brother. You are equals under the Lotus._

Riiight…

"Greetings, Brother Alpha"

"Good afternoon Brother….?"

"Isaac, my name is Isaac."

"Then good afternoon Brother Isaac. I have some questions, and I was hoping you could answer some of them."

"I will answer to the best of my ability. But no promises" I'm not sure how he manages to convey the friendly laugh over telepathic channels, but he does it well.

We turn and walk to the kneeling pads by the relay window. I think I'm going to get along well with this guy. His mental voice is deep, but humorous and easy going.

"So, I am sure you have questions about being Tenno. Am I correct?"

"Amongst others, yes. I am just generally seeking all the information I can get. I have no memory of being Tenno and my other consciousness is not being very helpful…"

"Ah. You have a cognitive fissure do you not? I was briefed by the Lotus, but I was under fire at the time so I didn't catch all of what she said."

"I think that was what the doctor said. He didn't seem too sure, but let's assume I have. What do you know about it?"

"Very little. It is caused when a Tenno develops multiple personality disorder. In humans, only one personality can be active at a time – which is confusing enough. But since Tenno have a very different brain, any number of personalities can be active simultaneously. So with the correct training, and patience, the disorder can be theoretically turned into an advantage on the battlefield…"

"So my other consciousness is not actually me?"

"Unknown. As with all things psychological there is a 'most common' which is how the disorders are defined, and then there are the fringe cases. It may be that the other consciousness is you, or may only be claiming to be you. Or he might not even be a permanent resident at all."

"So… you're saying, he could be someone else's consciousness which is paying me a visit?"

"Yes, in theory it is possible. It is well known that very powerful psionics can overthrow the native consciousness in a body and take remote control of it. So it isn't too farfetched to suggest you may be getting a visitor from another's mind…"

"So… how would you tell which one of us is the interloper?"

"Well, whichever one of you was in this body in their last memories before you were awakened. If you don't mind me asking, am I speaking to Alpha or Beta? I assumed Alpha, but I apologise if I was mistaken."

"You weren't. I am Alpha, Beta is listening though."

"And which one of you remembers this body in your memories before awakening?"

" _I do. Alpha didn't even know what a warframe was when he awoke."_

"I assume you are Beta?"

 _"Correct. I am Tenno, and I have the memories of a Tenno. However, Alpha controls our body."_

"I see… is this true Alpha?"

"Yes. My memories are fragmented but the last thing I remember was being punished somehow, it caused public outrage if I recall correctly. I have no memory of being a Tenno."

I am a little scared now. If I am the interloper, then by rights I should be removed to allow Beta to operate as efficiently as possible… Where would that leave me though?

Isaac tilts his head and thinks for some time…

"So, the Tenno consciousness is not in control of the Tenno body… But you are, Alpha?"

"Yes… So, what will happen to me now? Will I be removed? Is that possible?"

"No. There is no way that I know of to remove you, or to put you into another body… but even if there was, we wouldn't do it yet. We need to figure out who or what you are…"

"And how would we do that?"

"I do not know… As I said, I have little knowledge of this disorder… And I don't know of anyone alive who would have the training to deal with it…"

"So we remain as we are for now?"

"Yes, I think our first objective however, must be to search for psychological specialists. If there are any left, they will be in cryogenic storage. So we should awaken them. The system needs the Tenno again anyway if the infested are loose…"

"Tenno?" The Lotus interrupts us.

"Yes Lotus?" we both reply in near perfect synchronisation

"I have received an alarming communication. One that may be linked to the group that saved Alpha. I will send it to your inboxes. Additionally, I was able to trace the message back relatively quickly and hack the camera feeds. I have an image of a woman, in a red and black bodysuit as the sender."

The holographic image appears next to us. It is a little blurry, but it is definitely the woman who rescued me.

"That's her Lotus! Definitely the same woman."

 _"Yep, definitely the same woman."_ Beta corroborates.

"She is wearing a different bodysuit, the other had more black, but I'm almost certain it is her. Beta, you seem pretty sure as well, can you verify?"

 _"Yup. Lotus can you rotate the hologram?"_

The hologram rotates in front of us, being 3D we can see some sort of reinforcement on the spine of the suit…

" _Yea. It's definitely her. I'd bet my life on it!"_

 _"_ How can you be so sure?" The Lotus asks a little doubtfully

 _"Easy. I remember thinking she had the most attractive ass I've seen in centuries. And she does, same ass, same girl."_

"I'm soo glad to see you don't objectify women Beta." I retort, not even trying to hide the sarcasm and disdain in my tone.

"You are attempting to use the shape of a human's gluteus maximus as a method of identification?" says Isaac in amazement. Probably amazement at our- at Beta's craziness.

 _"Yep. It's her."_ Beta is laughing internally, but is doing a fairly good job of appearing genuine to the other people in the room.

"I think we may need more… concrete proof of her identity." The Lotus sounds like she's trying not to smirk. "Alpha, how sure are you it is her? And please justify your assertions with a more… mature method."

"I cannot be certain, but she is wearing the same sort of bodysuit and that odd visor-like thing. To add to that, she does appear to have the same body shape and structure as the woman we saw, so it is not at all implausible. I mean, how many red and black suited women are running loose around the system?"

Beta murmurs something inside our head. I can't quite make out what it is…

What? I ask him.

 _The message. I was just saying she comes across as pretty assertive. My kinda girl._

Oh, the one in our inbox? Give me a second and I'll read it.

I turn my palm up and the holographic menu springs out. I go to inbox and read the fourth message:

 _Tenno,_

 _This is Cantis of the Red Veil Resistance and I am asking for your help. You fight the Grineer and Corpus and so do we, that makes us allies. We aren't as strong as you and we don't have your weapons but we've pissed off those bastards just the same. Now they're coming after us, systematically capturing our comrades and holding them hostage – using our brothers and sisters against us. Tenno, will you help us bring them home?_

 _If you do this, you must strike quickly and quietly. If you are seen. The enemy will execute our hostage before you can rescue them. Please, do not give them this chance._

 _We can't offer you much but we do have a large cache of spectre blueprints. Bring home our people and we will share these with you. Those who go above and beyond will receive a special token of our appreciation._

 _Thank you Tenno,_

 _Cantis_

Oh. Isaac is reading it too in his own inbox, so I wait for him to finish. The Lotus appears to have left, but she is likely ready to return at any point. Isaac finally speaks:

"I see the system has become a lot more complicated since I entered cryosleep…"

"I can't really comment. But it looks like it is getting more chaotic as we speak… We have to help these 'Red Veil' people, especially if they are the ones who rescued me…"

 _"Yea, we might even meet this 'Cantis' again. I think if we got to know her sh-"_

"No. We are not chasing off after some woman just because you like her ass. Especially not when we have to try and free these Red Veil guys, and find a pscyho-specialist for us."

 _"Awww… you're no fun Alpha."_

"When we have saved the Red Veil, got our own sanity sorted out, defeated the Grineer, got the Corpus in check and eradicated the infestation… We _might_ see if we can find her. Maybe."

* * *

Isaac had agreed readily to help with the defence of any cryopods we located for the Lotus to awaken, but for the rescue missions he had politely declined. As he pointed out, a Rhino warframe was not exactly designed for stealth and on a mission all about stealth… he would be more of a hindrance than anything. So we were alone, perched atop a shipping container and watching as the wardens patrolled around.

They kept to their patrols, they were only brainwashed Corpus after all. If they saw something of interest they would investigate but otherwise they would not deviate from their standard patrols. It seems ineffective but so far we've only seen two potential openings in the patrols. Neither of the openings was particularly ideal… so probably the best way to go about it would be to kill the wardens and then free the hostage and get out before someone wondered why the wardens weren't responding. That might be quite some time, since the Corpus really didn't care much. If the wardens were dead… something had killed them. And if something had taken down the wardens, all of whom were wielding supras (They were a sort of gattling gun, but with only three barrels and the barrels didn't move.), then whatever had killed them would likely kill the reinforcements. Hence, since wasting soldiers and synthetics was unprofitable, it was very unlikely that any reinforcements would be sent. They were a merchant cult after all. Human lives were worthless to them unless they could work.

I swing down, into the container as a warden walks in. One quick stab and he was gone. And then we move, slowly, towards the next piece of cover. The warden's death has opened up a significant gap in the patrols. A gap which we exploit. Our mind is calm, and our senses are on hyper alert. So when the next warden steps around the corner barely a meter from us we are already in motion. Our body and our blade are one. And then the blade enters the back of the warden's neck, just below the boxy helmet. He crumples and our warfame crouches and watches dispassionately as his body dissolves. I'm still not sure how that works, Beta says it is the warframe converting the matter into energy to power itself. I'm not convinced, the warframe doesn't feel any more or less energised no matter how many I kill.

We advance towards the large door of the detention facility, carefully skirting round – outside of the camera's line of sight – moving from cover to cover. Two kunai in rapid succession deal with the cameras. And then we approach the door terminal. Bea takes one look at it and announces

 _NOPE. We're going round._

Why? Would it not be simpler to hack this and go through?

 _No. The terminal has a time limit. If I can't hack it inside of the time limit then the alarm goes off. You won't remember the last time we got shot with a supra. I do. It hurts, take my word for it. We do not want to set off the alarms._

Ok. So, how exactly do we 'go around' an inch-thick blast door?

 _Look around. I bet that vent duct goes in._

The vent duct? The one in the middle of the floor? What kind of moron would design a prison with a vent duct that would allow you to avoid the security systems and the blast door?

 _It was in full view of both cameras and both the warden's patrol routes. If we'd tried to get into it without killing them we'd have a problem._

Its worth a try I guess…

I sneak over to the duct covering, pull it aside and drop into it – replacing the cover as I fall – all in one fluid motion. Then we set off. I decide to go left of the obvious direction. Even the Corpus cannot be stupid enough to make a direct circumnavigation of the blast door and _not_ put any traps on it.

 _No. Go the obvious way. It does actually lead into the detention area._

Are here any traps?

 _Shouldn't be. The Corpus are nearly as arrogant as the Grineer when it comes to security…_

And these are the people we're struggling to defeat?

 _Only because there's so many of them. 2 Tenno and some Red Veil against several trillion synthetics and brainwashed soldiers? Not going to happen fast._

Fair point.

 _Factor in an almost as numerous and rapidly growing inbred clone military force. And an almost indestructible plague that consumes almost all biomass… And all of a sudden you realise that the level of their security doesn't matter much. We'd get in even if it was state of the art. It'd just cost them more. For a run-of-the-mill hostage, they simply aren't willing to sacrifice that much money. If they remain imprisoned, great. If they don't, it's not a big deal? They probably have several hundred hostages at the very least. One more or one less makes little difference to them._

I reroute and go through the straight passage. I still keep an eye out for traps, but as predicted there are none. I heave myself up onto the floor of the detention area and look around. There appear to be two doors that are locked.

I thought there was only one hostage here?

 _So did I… The other cell probably contains something nasty…_

So which one do we open?

 _Both. IF there are two hostages, and we leave one… The Lotus will actually show up in person to kick our asses…_

Great…

I go for the leftmost door and Beta hacks the console in seconds. Whining about ' _The #%$(* &^, who dared to put a timer on a simple lock'_ and what exactly he was going to do to the guy once he got our hands on him. The door opens, and the startled hostage stares at us for a second before recovering.

"Can I have a weapon? I'll help if I can." His voice is a bit muffled by the suit he wears, but the enthusiasm to hurt his captors is quite clear.

Without speaking we hand him our secondary. The kunai are probably the right size for a human to be able to use. To a Tenno these are throwing knives. To a human they're throwing daggers or short swords. But they should still be usable.

We head to the other door and begin working on it. Beta is going into explicit detail of what he intends to do to the person who invented the timer for consoles. Very explicit detail.

Beta? I'm not sure that last bit is anatomically possible. There's a ribcage in the way.

 _Give me a blunt knife and I'll cut the guys ribs out an make it possible! Seriously what a * &#"!_

I take it you prefer the Grineer consoles?

 _At least you can take your time with them!_

Now that I can agree with. But you seem to be doing these quicker…

 _Oh. Don't get me wrong, they are easier to do. It's just there's a lot of pressure because of the timer. Seriously, once this is over we need to find the guy who decided to do this. If you want, I'll teach you some things too._

Oh, like what?

 _Well, like how much pain the average human can take before they pass out, how to hurt someone without leaving a mark, the basics of acquiring information from an unwilling subject and a bit of anatomy. And a bit of surgery. It'll be a very educational experience._

You know what? I can actually go with that.

 _Wait, what?_

I answered in the affirmative. If we survive, we can hunt down this guy and you can entertain yourself with him.

 _I… I'm touched. You'd really let me do that?_

Yup. The conditions are: you help me as much as possible to survive this mess, and that I don't have to watch. Deal?

 _DEAL! I'm liking you more already. Now to kill us some Corpus!_

Aye. But we only do that when 'this is all over'. That means there is no trace of the infestation in the system. OK?

 _Yea. I can live with that… I'm still expecting you to say this is a trick…_

No. I'm genuine. IF we outlast the Grineer and Infested, and subdue the Corpus, then I will literally help you hunt this guy down and let you torture him to death. If we both have a motivation to survive we will fight better. Your motive may be about as sick minded as they get, but it still works in our favour.

* * *

The console beeps in acceptance of the hack, and the door opens… The infested charger is not as surprised as the hostage was, it could smell us coming. It leaps at us, and knocks me off my feet before Beta or I can force our body to react! SHIT.

Fortunately, the charger ignores the hostage and leaps into the vents… Unfortunately, we hear it leap out on the other side, and in its mad bid for freedom it doesn't realise the last remaining warden has seen it. We both flinch as we hear the supra spool up to full fire rate. The charger gives one shriek and then dies under the hail of superheated plasma. We're on our feet now, but it's too late. We hear mag-boots clomping across the decking outside the entrance… and then the klaxon alarms begin. Well… so much for stealth…

Seeing as the warden is reporting the situation into the console right by the door, I slide into the ducts and upon reaching the intersection, take the right turn instead of going up like the charger did. We sprint along it, the hostage close behind, and after a few turns we come out and see the mess. There are a few spores of infestation still lingering, but the supra… The fire from the supra has literally melted holes through the thin steel walkway. Lots of holes. The walkway looks like molten Swiss cheese! I don't even consider going under it, seeing as its still dripping molten metal. So we sprint alongside until we reach a wall, and leap up that. We land, and look up into the robotic face of a moa. We stab it through even before its robotic brain can process the enemy in front of it. The Red Veil hostage climbs up and showers a second moa in kunai before it can open fire. He's good.

We sprint for the door leading to extraction, but then we hear a very unwelcome sound: The sound of the supra beginning to fire! Suddenly, but not unpredictably, the air is full of superheated plasma. We turn, grab the hostage and yanking him off his feet completely, and break into a full sprint towards the exit. The warden clearly has a good sense of drama, and not a very good sense of leading targets. The supra-fire is tearing up the decking right behind us, but none of it actually hits us. Clearly luck is on our side, there's no other explanation for how out of so many shots not one has hit us.

And then I take it back. The first plasma that hits us is just absorbed by the shields, as is the second. The tenth bold of plasma takes off the last of our shield, and then I feel the pain. I'm almost at the corner, and once I'm around it we'll be safe. I keep running. Keep taking hits. It feels like there are holes melted through my body, and its excruciating! I keep running, not caring any more. I blank out the pain, and keep running. The hostage screams, but when I look down, I see that the plasma has only grazed him. Still a serious injury, but he'll live. Finally, the corner. I skid around the corner, bowling over a crewman, and sprint onwards. We must look bloody ridiculous, an Excalibur warframe charging through a corpus facility as every alarm goes off, knocking into crewmen and synthetics alike.

The warden has lost us; he can't run very fast in that obstructive suit that all the Corpus wear… A thing for which I am eternally grateful. I reach the extraction airlock, and put the Red Veil agent into it. It spins, and then I step into it and enter my Liset.

That bloody hurt! It feels like I've been shot right through…

 _Uhh… Don't look down._

I look down. And regret it. The reason it feels like I've been shot through, is because I have! There are six large blackened holes in the front of my midriff, I was shot in the back! And then the floor comes up to meet me…

" _Ordis! Get us to the Relay. He's going to need more than battlefield healing for this…"_

"Of course" He chirps "May I ask who you are?"

" _My name is Beta, I'm sharing a body with Alpha, your operator. A body which is likely about to fail. Now get us to the relay!"_

"En route. ETA is 5 minutes."

End of Part 5


	6. Recovery

"But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never again come into being" - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

One faction _must_ win the war, but that faction will have to destroy all of the others, and as Sun Tzu points out; once the other factions have been destroyed... they won't be back soon, if ever...

Now which faction does the system need the most, and which can it live without? Does it need the Corpus, the traders that unite the majority of the fractured colonies, the faction that helps the common people the most... Or does the system need the Grineer? They may be brutal, but their cloning deficiencies can be cured, and they would be able to rapidly rebuild after the war... If their culture could be changed they have the potential to make a stable system... Or perhaps the Tenno themselves? They may be misled by the Lotus for now... But cut the head off the snake... And the Tenno wipe out any and all who may be responsible in an act of vengeance. They would have a just rule, but they would never accept the truth... Or perhaps the infested? Alad V promised a peace under his mutalist empire... No, the infested would not suffice, they are mindless abominations, not capable of rebuilding a system... Alad V was delusional.

* * *

 **Recovery**

"…he should be feel… better now… oon be out of the bed…"

" _Thank you doctor. Do you have any idea how he shut off our pain receptors?"_

"No. I'm afraid I didn't get a read… Do you have any idea how he di…"

BETA!

 _Ah, you're awake. How you feeling?_

My hearing's gone funny. And I can't see anything.

 _That's because your eye is shut._

What?

 _Open your eye, numbnuts._

I search my memory and finally find the memory of my awakening. I search for the feeling I got just before I saw myself from over my shoulder for the first time and mimic it. The light is almost blinding but my strange form of vision adjusts almost instantly. Man, I had almost gotten used to this, but now it feels weird again… how can I even see myself over my shoulder? What did Beta mean by open my eye? Do I only have one eye?

Beta? Does this body only have one eye?

 _No. This body has no physical eyes, you're using the 'third eye' it sees you from behind you. It's a psionic trick that comes in very handy. It allows you to do stuff like 'no brain' and look around corners without showing your head._

No brain?

 _Yea. Defence technique. I'll teach you sometime. Now pay attention._

"Alpha? Can you hear me?" The doctor is looking a me mildly concerned, I realise I've sat up.

"I hear you doctor. What happened?"

"I don't know the details, but your mission was a success. Ordis decided to teleport you into the relay's medbay. Unfortunately, being a somewhat degraded cephalon, he forgot to ask where it was safe to teleport you. So you were suddenly occupying the same area of space as a tray of scalpels. Due to the atomic overlap, both sets of atoms repelled each other and your body was almost cut in half by the ensuing rupture. We've repaired all of your injuries since."

"So I can go?"

"We'd prefer if you stayed for some more scans, but your duty calls, there are still many Red Veil agents in captivity…"

"Thank you doctor"

I get up and walk out of the medbay, the door seems to only be locked one-way. The doctor has done an amazingly good job. I can tell where the tray of scalpels and I shared space due to a minor itch, but I can't even feel where the supra's plasmas had gone through me. I jog out to the landing platform and step into the airlock. It doesn't open.

"Ordis, let me in. I don't have time to play games!" I snap at the ship cephalon mentally.

No reply.

"Ordis. Let. Me. In. NOW."

Still no reply, but then I hear something. Is that cephalon laughing at me? I'm about to really vent on the cephalon when I realise that actually the chuckling is coming from behind me, and it is amused chuckling not spiteful.

"Alpha, that's my ship. Please don't break the door down." Isaac's mirth-filled voice comes from somewhere behind me. Clearly he thinks it's quite amusing that I've been talking to a ship that won't recognise me. It kinda is, but still…

"Apologies, Isaac. If this is your ship though, where is my ship?"

"Ordis is just getting repairs, he managed to get a hull full of plasma getting you out of there. He should be back within minutes."

"Oh. Thank you, and sorry again. I honestly thought this was my ship, it has the same colour scheme and everything…"

"Aye. Not a problem. It's an easy mistake to make, best way to deal with it is to recolour your ship to something you like and recognise."

"You can do that?"

"Of course. Get Ordis to show you how, here he comes."

Sure enough, my identical Liset is making its way towards us through the docking bay. It stabilises vertically and docks, but before I can even move, the airlock rotates and a Tenno steps out! A third Tenno?

"Greetings Brother Isaac, Brother Alpha." The third Tenno says with a bow. "I am Antonio; I owe you my life Brother Isaac."

"Greetings Brother Antonio" We both intone formally.

"Is there any way I can assist you guys?" Antonio asks, dropping formality completely.

"If you feel up to it, you are welcome to join us on a rescue mission." Isaac says

"A rescue mission? I thought you didn't do rescue missions, Isaac?"

"Not a 'rescue' classification mission, I mean a mission to rescue a fellow brother or sister. The Lotus refers to them as 'defence' missions, since we have to defend the cryopod until an extraction team can get there. That is how Antonio was awakened, I secured the cryopod containing him for the extraction team and then he was awakened and briefed by the Lotus."

"Ah, I understand. And he is welcome to join 'us', I wasn't aware I was delegated to run defence missions?"

"You are now," Isaac chuckles "Come one, I need your help with another Tenno cryopod. It will likely come under heavy attack, and I can only cover so many places at once."

"I think I will join you," Antonio announces "Just give me a few minutes to chat up Cephalon Suda and see what information I can extract."

We all set off, Isaac and I head to our Lisets - Ordis having finally shown up, late – and Antonio heads into the relay. As we enter our separate ships I experiment and try to telepath Isaac in his ship. It works.

"Isaac, what are our target's coordinates?"

"I've had my cephalon send them to your ship's nav computer."

"Thank you. And who is Cephalon Suda?"

"Oh, Cephalon Suda is another of these information obsessed cephalons, the Lotus found her somewhere or something, and she's been allowed to take up residence in one of the halls of the relays."

"If the Lotus has only just found her, how does Antonio know her?"

"She was around before the collapse, unless I'm mistaken… best to ask Antonio though. He should catch up soon enough."

Both ships accelerate to ridiculous speeds as we home in on our target. Somewhere in the desolate forests of old Earth.

* * *

We're busy finishing off the third wave of attackers – mindless Grineer soldiers – when Antonio drops in. His Volt warframe is painted in yellows and blacks, and it actually looks quite good. His weapon of choice however, does not. It appears to be some form of infested weapon? It looks almost alive, and it is certainly biological in origin. The weapon fires short arcs of electricity, that seem to be ridiculously powerful. Regardless of how awful the weapon itself looks, it is undeniably effective. Between the three of us the 'third wave' basically dissolves, the alarm sounds, and the 'fourth wave' begins their suicidal attack on us…

I'm currently wielding the heat sword the Lotus send me the blueprint for, alongside a set of kunai that I've modded for corrosive damage (not that they need it) and my new Braton – I upgraded from the MK1 and while the two rifles are similar in performance, I think I am liking the standard Braton more. Isaac seems to favour heavier weapons, he is flourishing a machete – similar to the one's Grineer scorpions use – along with a Lex and a Boar full-auto shotgun.

As the fighting dies down I mentally connect to Antonio:

"Antonio, did you say you know Cephalon Suda?"

"Yup, course I do, Im the one who got 'her' to become a 'her'."

"Come again?" I duck as a flurry of bullets whistles by.

"Cephalons are genderless, comprende?"

"Yea." I fire a burst into a clump of soldiers, and admire my marksmanship as all of them fall.

"Well, Cephalon Suda appears as a female to some people, and uses a female voice for everyone."

"And you persuaded it, her, to do this?"

"Yea."

"How?" I step out of cover and absent-mindedly bat a grenade back to the lancer who threw it with my heat sword.

"Easy. Suda lusts after information. I told her people would be more inclined to talk to a woman."

"Riiight, and so what is the significance of this?"

"Easy. She tried it, and while she got a bit more information from people, it still wasn't enough. So I was feeling a bit stupid, and on a dare I told her why she wasn't getting as much information as she had hoped."

"I'm still not seeing the point…" I fling two kunai simultaneously at the pair of butchers who attempted to charge the pod. Both die.

"The point, is that I told her that the best way of getting information was to seduce people. It's common knowledge that men talk a lot after certain activities." I can almost see Antonio's grin through his faceplate. This guy is no less insane than we are...

"You're telling me; that you persuaded a cephalon, to take on the shape of a human female, and seduce Tenno soldiers to gain information?!" My mental voice probably sounds as incredulous as I feel!

"Not quite. It never worked, but Suda still uses a female voice. And sometimes she changes her projection to a cute chick just to humour me. We have a fair bit of history."

"Sometimes, I really do wonder where all the sane people are…"

"Eh, lighten up, it was just a bit of misplaced humour."

"Indeed it was, but what would've happened if you succeeded?" Isaac interjects in a more serious tone.

"Ehh, I guess… The Lotus would've probably put me on guard duty for a century or something if it'd worked…" Antonio admits, obviously still not regretting it.

"Tenno, the extraction team is coming in to land, is the pod clear?" The Lotus' voice echoes through all our heads."

 _Speak of the devil and she shall appear_

"The pod is clear Lotus" I reply on the same channel. I turn and check the pod just to be sure.

One of the older, more angular Lisets - like the one that Vor shot down - appears through a gap in the forest canopy and picks up the cryopod with some sort of beam. It raises the pod all the way up and into an old fashioned airlock on the bottom of its hull. Once the airlock is sealed the old ship moves up, and upon clearing the canopy it accelerates off into the distance. We head to extraction, all glad that nothing went wrong – for a change.

None of us noticed the strange warframe perched on a tree branch some distance away. Watching, waiting.

End of Part 6


	7. Shadows of Meridian

The infested... They may be repulsive abominations, but they have a hivemind. They may be disorganised, but only because the constant Tenno attacks keep them that way. We know they are capable of ingenious creation; they can make weapons using biology, weapons that are on a par – if not slightly superior – with Tenno weapons. In the short time since the mutalist strains were released they have created weapons that are as powerful as weapons the Tenno have refined over centuries... now imagine if they were to focus on peace... They could build vast cities of hives, hives that feed their inhabitants with void energy, and they would ensure peace... No-one would rebel because the mass mind would be the perfect democracy...

Hmm, perhaps I should look into this more, I'm sure the infested wouldn't object to having the most dangerous known Tenno in the system working alongside them... Especially if they realised that Tenno's goals were the same as their own...

* * *

 **Shadows of Meridian**

It's just a normal mission, or as close to normal as any mission that involves saving Red Veil agents from and army of deteriorating clones can get. The galleon is nothing special, the only reason it has been selected is because it happens to house a detention facility. I do not know its course, only its fate. The Grineer do not believe in second chances, if their soldiers fail, they are more often than not executed. While it won't really thin the unfathomable numbers of the Grineer, it still feels good to be responsible for so many enemy deaths.

I'm about halfway to the holding facility when I begin to notice things that aren't quite right…

I notice there aren't any patrols in this part of the ship, that there are scratch marks and bullet holes in the walls. In one corner I spot the tiniest bit of blood on a wall, and upon inspection I realise that someone – or something – has cleaned away a much larger blood splatter and only missed that one drop. I notice that the machinery is no longer operational, the consoles no longer lit up… This is not good…

Regardless, I have a mission, I continue onwards. As I sneak along, I notice that some of the panels have been put back hastily along the walls and floors, and that some of the lockers and containers are open… As I round the corner I notice two things instantly, there are some sort of drag marks, barely visible leading to a ventilation panel, and that there is a console bent at a very suspicious angle. I approach it, and sure enough, there are wires protruding to form an improvised arc trap. If I had gotten between those wires I would've completed the circuit and it would've likely killed half my shields… I carefully edge around it, keeping an eye open for more traps, and approach the vent panel. With a deft jab of my heat sword I knock it off, and stick my head in. And stare.

Whatever killed the massive pile of Grineer that is hidden in the duct before me, definitely knew what it was doing, it also definitely was not a warframe – a warframe would've dissolved the bodies… Some of the corpses haven't got a single mark on them, others have clearly been strangled or stabbed with something. Some of the wounds are similar to the wounds left by a superheated edge like on Grineer weapons… whatever did this, did it manage to turn them against each other? I jerk around, sword raised, but there isn't anything there… I could've sworn something was sneaking up on me.

I replace the panel and move towards the holding facility, now moving even more cautiously than before. I disable a few more obvious traps, and avoid another I barely saw in time. The cleaver swings harmlessly past me, and I note that whatever tied the cleaver to a piece of string, clearly knew their knots too… Whatever set these traps up, intended to kill Grineer, nothing else would happily walk over a tripwire, and most of the traps are quite easy to spot. That doesn't mean they won't be a threat though. But I continue anyway, there are no signs of life anymore, not even bloodstains on the walls, whatever did this is clearly quite intelligent.

Finally, I get to the holding facility, and after checking around the console several times, I decide to take my life in my hands and try to hack it. I touch the console. Nothing happens. It doesn't even light up… I quickly realise that the power has been cut. I am about to try and trace the wires back, when I remember something Isaac told me; Grineer doors are so hard to open once they're closed because they are held to the floor by electromagnets. Electromagnets which won't work with the power off! I sidle over to the door and, after magnetizing my gauntlets, proceed to lift it. It moves easily, and relatively quietly, but in the absolute silence that envelops the ship it sounds like the loudest thing I've ever heard. I slip under it, and put it back down gently.

I walk quickly forwards, noting that the wardens seem to be gone. I leap up the balcony to the upper level and nearly die of shock. There are all three wardens! I have my sword out before I realise they haven't reacted… I approach slowly, and notice that they are propped up on their own guns. The wardens are dead! I rush to the doors and yank them open searching for the hostage, she is in the second cell I rip the doors off. She looks up at me, completely unsurprised.

"Are the other ones with you?"

"The other ones?" I reply cautiously, this doesn't seem right…

"Yea, the people who were trying to force the door open after the power went off. Weren't they with you?" She sounds a little perturbed now too...

"I know of no other people who could be on this ship… Did you get a good look at them?"

"I couldn't see anything through the door, and when it opened slightly I saw a bit of grey, and then the door slammed shut again. Then the power went out, and I heard whispers. Then you arrived."

"How long ago was this?!" If this is a trap, I am so screwed.

"Maybe 20 standard Earth minutes ago…"

I check my mission timer, I arrived 21 minutes ago. Not good. Whoever it is we're dealing with knew I was on the ship within a minute of my arrival…

"Let's get out of here." I say telepathically, and hand her my kunai.

We both sidle out of the holding facility cautiously, past the warden's corpses. I hold the blast door up for her to go underneath, and she covers me while I manoeuvre under it. Then we sneak onwards. Neither of us speaks. We continue like this for some time. I'm so used to the silence, that when we hear the whisper it sounds deafeningly loud.

"Tenno, Agent, we mean you no harm!" We both turn at the disembodied female voice.

Both the agent and I take up firing positions, neither of us sure where the whisper came from.

"Tenno, we mean you no harm, please, let me explain."

I remain tense, but lower my Braton slightly.

" **Show yourself!** " I demand on every telepathic channel

Nothing happens.

" **If** you mean us no harm, we will **not** hurt you **. Show yourself."** Even I am not sure how my telepathic voice has ended up so commanding suddenly. I am not complaining.

After a few seconds a figure drops down from the ceiling, meters away from us at most!

"We mean you no harm" she repeats, her hands outstretched in a placating gesture.

"Who are you?" I ask, as I look up, and see a whole squad of grey-bodysuit wearing figures detaching from the ceiling. The seem to be wearing lighter armour, but it follows the Grineer aesthetic. That is not very trust inspiring...

"We are Steel Meridian commandos; we were ordered to free Red Veil hostages wherever possible to ease the burden on the Tenno."

"You work for the Lotus?"

"No, we serve our own goals, but we will happily work _with_ the Lotus."

The woman who dropped down first, is wearing some sort of hood, and has a crude eye-patch covering one eye. Her commandos are armed with all sorts of weapons, but all of them are Grineer in origin. She has a machete holstered on her back, as well as a marelok pistol on her hip, but other than that I see no hidden armaments on her… I assume her to be the leader.

"I see… Have you spoken to the Lotus?"

"No. We intended to though. Any chance you'd put in a good word for us?"

Her voice is a little harsh, but only due to the cloning degradation. I can see clearly now that every single 'commando' sharing the hallway with us, is actually Grineer… This could be a trap, but the Grineer don't generally bother with traps. And IF this is a trap is it very well executed…

"Why don't you just come visit one of the relays and you can speak to her yourselves?"

"Simple. Those damn things are so well hidden we haven't been able to find them. And you obviously can't trust us with coordinates. So we need the Lotus to contact us. Will you help us?"

"I will ask her… How can she contact you?"

"I don't know… We only really have Grineer technology, so we won't even be able to pick up most Tenno signals…" She sounds a little despondent now, having realised that we might have significant difficulty contacting her.

"Tenno? What is going on? Who were you demanding identify themselves?" I swear the Lotus has either the best timing or the worst. Then I realise that I broadcast that instruction on _all_ telepathic channels. Including the one I use to communicate with the Lotus…

"I have found a group of Grineer commandos who all but did my mission for me… They had hoped to make contact with you, presumably through the Red Veil."

"Please verify Tenno; You have found a group of _Grineer_ commandos who are attempting to make contact with _me_?" The disbelief is audible in her voice, but she still sounds in control.

"Yes Lotus, that is correct."

"I see… On your liset there is a comms device, give that to them. And tell them they need to get away as soon as possible. Two more Grineer Galleons are heading towards the one you are on."

I beckon for them to follow and we jog through the ship, towards extraction. I'm slightly surprised that they can keep pace with me, but I guess they are commandos…

When we reach my ship, I step into the airlock and quickly locate the aforementioned comms device. I step out of the ship, and hand it to the leader.

"The Lotus says you should be able to reach her through that. She also says you need to leave, there are two Grineer galleons headed for us."

"Thank you Tenno, I hope we meet again." She barely reacted when I told her the Galleons were coming,b ut I can almost sense her brain whirring.

With that she turns and roars something in Grineer at her soldiers, who form an orderly line and then sprint – still in line – towards some other part of the ship. She turns, salutes us, and then sprints off after them in silence. I notice that she has a small combat knife, also with a superheated blade, hidden in her boot. And then I remember that we still have to get off this ship. I motion for the agent to get into the Liset. I follow her, and the Liset accelerates off into space.

* * *

"Ordis, stop here and turn us to face the Galleon"

Ordis complies, and both the agent and I look out at the galleon as the viewport opens. The other two galleons are almost on top of it, and then they both begin firing. We can tell by the flashes and the impacts on the hull of the disabled galleon. I really hope those commandos can get clear in time. Anyone who can stand up to the Grineer is worth having on our side, especially if they're as good as those guys. Insofar as I could tell, most of the disabled galleon's crew had died silently. Even I would struggle to do that!

 **BOOM**. We both stare, in numb silence, as the disabled galleon explodes! Explosions in space are not big and not very loud, but they are still lethal. The explosion stuns us, but it absolutely destroys both of the attacking galleons. As we watch, one of the attackers lists to the side, most of its hull incinerated! There's nothing left of the other attacker…

The agent and I look at each other, and then we both silently salute the space where the disabled galleon had been. We both knew no-one could had survived that explosion.

The comm device's receiver crackles and I grab it by instinct.

"Thanks for the heads up Tenno. We got clear just in time thanks to you." A familiarly harsh, but friendly voice surprises us both.

She survived?

"Tenno to Steel Meridian, we copy. Do you require any assistance?"

"Thanks, but no thanks. We set the ship to self-destruct and cleared off, we have everything we need. Time included, you have our thanks. Our scanners didn't even pick up those galleons... if you hadn't warned us…"

"Affirmative. I hope to work alongside you again."

"Same here Tenno, Steel Meridian Leader out."

End of Part 7


	8. Why do I fight?

I had always wondered, how was it that even the 'innocent civilians' that we rescued from detention facilities knew how to use any and all of the weapons we gave them… I know now of course, that they were not 'innocent civilians', in fact, they were dangerous terrorists. Many of them had been trained in using the weapons we gave them, and all were familiar with weapons and how to use them. The Lotus wanted us to spring them out of jail to make the Tenno into a force of terror. A force of terror so terrifying, that no-one would dare approach them to ask. And if no-one asked why they did what they did, then the Tenno assumed it was because they all knew why we did what we did. Oh how blind we were. Even once I knew the Lotus was misleading us, it took an innocent child to bring me to my senses…

* * *

 **Why Do I fight?**

 _Go on, admit it: You fancy her really, don't you?_

No. She's a clone. I'm not interested in a clone!

 _Yes, you are, I'm you remember. I get some of your thoughts. And I'm telling you: you do fancy that chick!_

No I don't.

 _Yes. You do!_

Beta. Save it for later. We have a mission to focus on!

 _Aye, and yet you can't think of anything else except the woman with the combat knife in her boot._

I am thinking of something else! I'm thinking of the mission. We can continue this pointless argument later if you really insist, but right now the warden is coming.

 _It's only pointless cause you know I'm right._

Beta, I really do wonder if we are actually the same person... clearly you do fancy her, but I feel nothing for her except professional admiration – which she really deserves.

 _Hmpf. Whatever, warden's almost here._

I have been running rescue missions for Red Veil agents for almost three weeks solid now. The other Tenno I helped rescue in that defence mission, has been doing the same. He doesn't remember his name – cryonesia seems to have hurt him more than most, so we just call him Loki – after the frame he wears. Between the four of us - myself, Loki, Isaac and Antonio – we have caused enough damage to warrant a Corpus system upgrade and the Grineer to import heavier troops to the lower priority planets. Earth now has an abundance of napalms and bombards, if I didn't have to run rescue missions all the time they could provide good entertainment. Unfortunately, I _am_ running stealthy rescue missions, and while the homing rockets their weapons fire are way too slow to be a threat, they are also way too loud for other soldiers not to notice. Napalms are just awful, and I often find myself going out of my way to remove them from the equation even when it isn't necessary. That particular activity has only got me caught once so far, and even then it wasn't too severe because the low level grunts that get stationed on Earth don't actually put up much of a fight.

Antonio specialises in sabotage missions, whether it's a toxin injector or a reactor, so long as it needs to fail he's happy to do it. Coincidentally, the guy cannot fix anything to save his life, so we always ask him about what he's fixed when we meet him. It goes down quite well because he has the best, but also crudest, sense of humour of anyone I've ever encountered. Isaac on the other hand, follows a more noble calling - defending our brothers and sisters in cryosleep. However, he hasn't been able to find anymore Tenno since Loki, sure he has found plenty of human operatives, but no Tenno capable of donning a warframe. Loki prefers to do spy missions and occasionally rescue missions. He is feeding information to Isaac about the whereabouts of cryopods, and if he finds the location of a Tenno in cryosleep Isaac will know within minutes.

Which leaves me; stuck doing rescue missions. It is rewarding, the Red Veil have given me enough spectre blueprints to last a lifetime. They even gave me a rakta syndana at some point. But they have many agents and almost all of them were captured in the purge of the colonies. The grineer have decimated the colonies in their desperate search for more hostages, and it has gotten so bad that a new group has formed. The Steel Meridian. They dedicate themselves to protecting the innocent, especially the innocent colonists. A very noble cause, especially bearing in mind they had to sabotage an entire cloning facility to remove the mental controls that prevent the normal Grineer from rebelling against their queens. If they had been caught... it doesn't even bear thinking about.

I drop from our vantage point, slice through the the warden's helmet and roll into the shadows -dragging his body with me. In seconds it dissolves, leaving me safely behind cover and everyone else oblivious to my presence. The cameras are still watching the area directly in front of the door to the cells, and the second warden continues on his patrol completely oblivious to the fate which awaits him. I drop down from the platform and dive into a ventilation shaft, silently sprint along it, and come out the other side just in time to yank the warden's armoured boots. He hits the ground and falls down below the catwalk to where I am without making a sound, his death is no louder than his fall.

I don't even bother with the cameras this time, instead ducking back into the ventilation shafts. I run along the all too familiar route, and don't even bother to check for traps as I clamber up into the area behind the blast door. I look at the cells, and then picking one at random I approach it. We have learnt since the first time, so we knock on the door. No answer, we move to the other door and knock on that. The infested creature within gives a low growl. I move back to the other door and let Beta hack it, and it opens to the show the hostage asleep within. I'm startled, I have honestly never seen any of the hostages asleep in their cells, they're usually wide awake. It's probably hard to sleep knowing each day _could_ be your last, or that a Tenno _could_ show up to free you at any moment.

I poke the hostage who is still deeply sleeping, and upon receiving no response, simply pick him up and start going again. He'll probably wake up at some point so I'll have to keep an eye on him. Last thing we want is for a newly awakened human to dazedly ask where we are when we're about to slit a crewman's throat silently from behind.

The Corpus facility is unusually quiet, but I have more sense than to let my guard down. Beta is positively paranoid that there's a trap, and that the corpus secretly know we're here. I doubt it, although an ambush might be considered more cost effective than a normal attack, so it can't be ruled out...

Nothing went wrong. There was no secret ambush, no excitement – we literally didn't see a single crewman on our way out. That makes me even more concerned... well, it doesn't matter now; I'm at the airlock. And the hostage is finally awake, clearly he is not a morning person though...

"Congratulations operator, a fully successful mission. The Red Veil have given you three more points" Ordis' announces from somewhere as I step into the airlock – having just manhandled the still barely awake hostage in before me.

"Three more points? But I only killed two wardens, there are always at least three and the third point is for killing all the wardens..."

Beta and I are both thinking like mad. Did we actually kill the third warden and not remember it?! Is that possible? Or did something else, or some _one_ else kill the warden? I type out a message to the usual suspects.

* * *

To: Antonio, Isaac, Loki

Were either of you in the Linea sector in the past standard earth hour?

Alpha

* * *

Ordis has set a course for a drop off point for the hostage so I go and check through my mods while I wait for the replies... I check my messages and see three replies, all of which are in the negative. Oh.

So no-one was in the same sector, but the third warden was definitely killed?

 _No-one we know of at least, I asked the Lotus and she says she doesn't know of any other awakened Tenno._

Is it possible the warden might've fallen and died or something?

 _What, like he fell over and cracked his skull through the helmet? Not likely._

So, he was definitely killed?

 _Yea. Red Veil just replied. His vitals spiked suddenly and then flatlined. They say we should get bonus points for scaring the guy._

Scaring the warden?

 _The spike on the heart rate indicates fight or flight response. He was scared for a second or so before he died._

And we definitely didn't do it...?

 _I'll get the Lotus to ask Cephalon Cordylon to review our helmet cam's footage, but I'm pretty sure we don't have any gaps in our memory._

Is... would it be possible for something to be following _us_?

 _No, don't be silly. For starters Lisets are completely undetectable, for seconds most of the system already fears us – and hence is unlikely to stalk us – and third, we're very stealthy almost all the time because we've been doing rescue missions this whole time._

Yea, it does seem more or less impossible when you put it like that...

I guess someone might want to stalk us for information though – especially if they're scared of us...

* * *

The not-quite-a-warframe watches from the back of the Liset as the Excalibur directs the shuttle to the next mission, before kneeling and disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Neither of the Excalibur's consciousnesses notices. Even if they had noticed, they wouldn't have heard the red and black warframes parting words; "Stalker, yes.. I quite like the sound of that, perhaps that is what I shall call myself in this new era of Tenno... They will need a name for me, a name to fear."

* * *

The Liset drops us off at the colony, I've never been in one before, but I have finally saved up enough platinum to buy myself a decent weapon and the colony is home to several arms dealers who will sell me modern weapons – perhaps even Tenno weapons – far cheaper than Darvo would. Darvo is a nice guy, but based on his prices he doesn't get much business... I just have to hope that the humans won't panic if they see a warframe in their midst.

I follow the HUD's directions through the spaceport, everywhere I go I get strange looks. Some people look like they've seen a ghost, some look angry, some look scared. This was to be expected, but a bargain is a bargain. And humans are not going to be able to put me off just by looking at me funny.

 _Alpha, don't worry yourself about them. Seeing us is going to do them good once they get over the initial shock._

How do you work that out?

 _Well, the Grineer rule by fear. If something scarier than the Grineer shows up... The Grineer lose whatever support they may have and suddenly find people resisting._

But won't the Grineer just kill them if they resist?

 _I don't mean resist as in rebel, the humans aren't that stupid. But all of a sudden, the Grineer will suddenly find that when they ask for something – it will take longer to be found, and when they need repairs – it will cost slightly more, and when they need to spy – everyone will act off around them. No open rebellion, but just a little bit here or there to make the Grineer's lives just a tiny bit more unpleasant._

Why? Why would humans do that?

 _It's just human nature, if the rulers seem weak, then the ones being ruled begin to resent them. They subconsciously welcome the stronger ruler, the one that will benefit the community more. Historically speaking, when one nation occupied another, sometimes to trigger a rebellion all it took was for one soldier to stand tall and defy the occupier to their face._

Nations?

 _Yea, a bit like territories. They existed back before Orokin._

How do you know about them then?

 _We had to study history, psychology and manipulation. And old Earth history offers some very good examples of manipulation..._

I thought Tenno were warriors only?

 _We are warriors first and foremost, but an uneducated soldier makes the same mistakes as his predecessor. We learnt a lot about military tactics too. When fighting the Grineer and Corpus it doesn't seem necessary, but when we fought the sentients... we had to use every trick in the book, and then improvise._

We continue onwards, following the HUD and trying to pay attention to our surroundings. Small crowds of people part to let us pass in the middle of the street, and we soon get to the marked address. We knock on the door, taking care not to dent it and a small hatch opens at human head height. I duck down, so that whoever is looking out can see my helmet.

"Whatever it is, I didn't do it!" comes the voice from the other side of the door.

 _We're not here to arrest you_

"Why are you here then?" The human is female and of about average height, for a human, but other than that I can't make out much through the small hatch.

 _We were hoping to inquire about the possibility of purchasing weapons, do we have the right address?_

"Oh, well I guess you'd better come in then..." The human's voice is now noticeably more relaxed.

We hear the sound of various different locking mechanisms being undone, and then the door slides open. It's several inches thick! Clearly my earlier concerns about _accidentally_ denting it were unfounded. I'm not sure I could dent that if I full on punched it...

I duck under the door, and then follow the human woman into a room. The room itself is quite small, mostly dominated by a colossal bookshelf. Wait, are those actual paper books? The woman reaches out and pulls one of the books half out, but then lets it drop back into it's place. I'm about to ask her what she's doing, when the whole bookshelf swings out! A hidden entrance! The space behind is a small elevator entrance. She beckons and we follow her into it.

* * *

The elevator moves almost silently down, by now we must be quite deep underground. Finally the woman speaks:

"So, what kind of weapon are you interested in?"

 _What do you have available by way of sniper rifles or long ranged rifles?_

"We have most of the up to date snipers and a few from antiquity, I think you'll like them. Might I ask what kind of targets you will be using them against?"

 _Most likely both armour and shields_

"You don't work for either faction?" She seems wary again

 _I serve the Lotus_

"Ah, forgive my curiosity. So you will probably want a weapon with a lot of puncture damage, but still a fair bit of impact... Aha. I have just what you need. You'll be wanting a Vectis, single shot sniper with a fairly decent spread of damage. It's mostly impact, but has a lot of puncture too and isn't lacking when it comes to slash damage. Right?"

 _That does sound ideal, what condition is it in?_

"Oh, we got a brand new one in the other day. Not literally brand new, no-one has made them since the collapse, but a well maintained one. The other Tenno guy brought it in."

The elevator has finally stopped, and we follow her to a large door. She inputs a code, and it opens to reveal a room absolutely full of weapons! Beta is mentally drooling over some of the stuff, clearly this woman has access to Tenno weapons too... I can see Latrons, Boltors, what appears to be a badly damaged Panthera, a couple of Attica crossbows and an entire wall rack of Boar shotguns. But no Vectis...

The woman keeps walking and that's when I realise this is only one room, probably of many. We walk past several rooms filled to the brim with Grineer and Corpus weapons and finally stop at the last room on the left. She inserts a rather longer code than last time, and the vault door slowly swings open. She clearly has a thing about thick doors... We follow her into the room and the stop and gawk in amazement. There are all sorts of weapons, including many Tenno melee weapons.. and on a maintenance bench right at the front, is a Vectis Prime alongside two other Vectis rifles!

 _You have a Vectis Prime? I am impressed._

"Aye, but it's not for sale yet. I'm trying to modify one of the other rifles to function as well. If all goes according to plan, the prime one should be available for sale soon. I take it you'd like me to contact you when that happens?"

 _Yes, certainly. Did you say you were trying to get the other rifles to be functionally the same?_

"Yup, the shiny one has two bullets per mag. And it hits much harder, but I'm not sure why. So I'm still trying to get up the courage to disassemble it and see what the difference is on the inside. Some of that Orokin stuff is molecularly bonded together, so disassembling it wrong would cause damage that I don't have the facilities to repair."

 _We might be able to help with that..._ I realise too late that Beta has taken temporary control over my body. He might be doing something useful though... So I just sit back and let him do his thing. Almost immediately, he and the arms dealer are both chatting away animatedly about all sorts of technical things... I find my mind drifting to the Vectis Prime, it's so shiny and the white and gold colour scheme makes it look very... almost majestic. The Orokin certainly knew how to build things with style. I get the feeling I might be here for some time though... And as they talk, I think back; did she say another Tenno delivered the newest Vectis? I'll have to ask the others where they got the blueprint from...

* * *

After almost four hours of Beta talking to the woman about things, field stripping the Vectis and the Vectis Prime and explaining more boring things that I don't understand... he finally announces:

 _So it's agreed then? And you're sure you want to give it to us this cheaply?_

"You've improved my understanding vastly, and knowledge is worth more than platinum. So thank you Tenno, it's yours."

Beta picks up the Vectis Prime and hands her the agreed upon sum, and then the realisation strikes me; he's bought the Prime instead of the normal one! As we follow her back to the lift, the beautiful rifle now holstered on our back, I decide I have to get him to do the sweet talking with arms dealers. I could never have persuaded someone to part with a Prime weapon without using intimidation... and he seems to have gotten it quite cheaply.

I leave the deceptively small house with my head held high, and the beautiful rifle glinting on my back. Now people are staring again, but I no longer mind. We decide to take a shortcut to a closer landing pad though, because the others will likely be questioning our absence with the Lotus... I duck down an alleyway and realise it's the wrong one, but then I stop short.

There are three men dressed in black surrounding a woman and her child. Based on the knives in their hands, they don't mean anything good either. I step further into the alley, and intentionally stand on some sort of rubbish. The metal snaps under my weight, and all three men look up. If it wasn't for the situation, it would have been quite amusing to map the expressions that pass over their faces in the short time between when they see me, and when they turn and run. If I had to guess, what started off as arrogance and aggression, quickly turned to confusion and then pure terror as they realised what was in the alley with them.

I approach the almost-victims slowly, and quickly check them for injuries. They show up as unharmed, better to be safe.

 _Are you okay, ma'am?_

"t..tt...Tenno?"

 _Yes, ma'am. Are you or the young one hurt?_

"n..nn..No, we're fine. I mean alright, thanks to you."

 _Do you require any assistance?_

Beta reads my thoughts and declares that there isn't time for such things, even before I ask.

 _Would you like me to escort you home?_

She looks up at me, apparently surprised.

"You'd do that for me?"

 _Yes. It is likely whoever those people were will try again, they don't seem the sort to accept defeat. The least I can do is ensure you make it home safely._

"I...I don't know what to say... Thank you, they were going to kill us because we didn't pay the protection money on time. I have it at home, but they refused to listen."

I just walk alongside her, knowing that actually the best thing I can do is to strengthen her with my presence – not my words. Eventually we strike up a conversation anyway though, and by the time we reach her home I'm almost wishing we could walk a little further. She is a fascinating person, and more importantly; she knows a lot about the colony and how it is run. Information I would be hard pressed to find elsewhere... But as I turn to go, I hear a small voice:

"Mr Tenno?"

 _Yes?_ I haven't heard the child speak at all so far, so this is an interesting change.

"Momma told me stories of what the Tenno do, is it true that you fight the evil clones?"

 _Yes, it is._

 _"_ Is it true that they're scared of you? Mummy says they are, and Daddy did too before he left."

 _Only the intelligent ones are scared of us, the rest cannot feel fear._ The little boy must be less than 5 standard Earth years old, or perhaps around that age... but still very young...

"So, Mr Tenno, why do you fight the evil clones and the company?"

 _I... I'm sorry, what?_

"Why do you fight the clones and the company?"

 _Ah, I see what you're asking_. I really don't, I honestly hadn't thought about it before... _I fight the clones and the company because they kidnapped my friends, and my friends friends._ I'm not sure how much sense any other explanation would make to the five year old, but friends are probably something he can relate to.

"So, once you've got all of your friends back... will you stop fighting them?" he asks hopefully, his face beaming all of a sudden.

 _Probably not, they are a danger to my friends, so I must fight them._ I am literally running out of answers here. I should have given this more consideration in hindsight.

"Please, Mr Tenno, could you not fight the company? My Daddy works for the company and I don't want him to get hurt. Please?"

 _Child, do you know where your Daddy is working? If you can tell me I can try and avoid that area._ I try to sound sympathetic, but I'm not sure how well it came out...

The child stares at me, and then rushes inside crying. I look at the mother, who shrugs and looks back at me. Its the sort of gesture that indicates that she knows exactly what's wrong, and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

 _Was it something I said?_ I ask softly

"No, it's that he doesn't know where his father is working. The company keeps things like that secret. They have to, Profit help us all if the Grineer find any way to monitor company troop movements... He's going to blame himself if his father dies, since he couldn't ask you to save him."

 _I am sorry_

"Don't be, you have your duty, it is what you were created for, you must do it. If you do not do your duty, another will be awakened to do it in your place."

 _There's really not much I can do if I meet his father. I will likely have to kill him or risk being killed myself._ Now that I've said it, that sounds so bloody selfish...

"I know, and I understand. The only way you can soften the blow is by making the company's soldiers deaths swift and humane."

She seems upset, so I turn and leave, intending not to upset her further. But as I walk, I think furiously fast; why do I fight the Corpus? Yes they're a cult, but so what? They don't harm innocent people so long as the innocent people pay their taxes... They're not like the Grineer who live only to destroy, the Corpus build up colonies like this one... Come to think of it, they've basically rebuilt half the system since the collapse... They're _almost_ the good guys...

 _Alpha, the Corpus are hardly the 'good guys'..._

No, but by comparison to the Grineer or the Infested? They seem pretty good...

 _They have conscription on most of their colonies..._

At least the conscripts have control of their own bodies, and aren't likely to be sentenced to death by Atterax for hesitating before following an order.

 _True... But they're a cult, they indoctrinate their soldiers and keep them like that for ten whole years!_

But then they let them free, to go back to their homes.

 _Yes, but ten years...? What if some poor bloke is conscripted right after his child is born. The kid wont see the dad till it's hit puberty!_

But it will see the father eventually. And so what, that's hardly a reason to kill them.

 _The upper ranks are hopelessly corrupt, and do evil science experiments. Experiments on live human test subjects!_

Yes, but that's only the upper ranks. Why not just assassinate them? Why kill the innocent footsoldiers who get in the way?

 _Please don't tell me you're developing a conscience..._

Don't worry, I'm not. I am however, still firm in my belief that unnecessary bloodshed is abhorrent. Especially of innocent people who have no choice but to be in the way.

 _Urgh, I guess we can ask the Lotus._

* * *

We argued back and fourth as the Liset flew through space towards the Relay, but I couldn't get the question out of my head; Why do I fight the Corpus? And now that we are asking odd questions... why do I feel like I'm being watched?

End of Part 8


	9. The Follower

Oh, of course! What better way to confuse the Tenno, than to make the one who could show them the truth without fear, appear as if an enemy? The one being in the whole system who could fearlessly confront a Tenno about their actions, and the Lotus ordered us to kill him. Why did we ever listen to her? It's hardly his fault that he couldn't get through to us, not for lack of trying, its simply that we refused to listen - believing his words to be tainted by hate and irrationality.

* * *

Chapter 9: The Follower

It wasn't going away, the feeling of being watched was still present. In the books and records I had been reading authors had used the term 'the sixth sense' to describe it. Being watched in and of itself did not bother me, it was the circumstances. I was a Tenno, my body had sensors within sensors built into it by the Orokin, I could sense even the tiniest changes in temperature or humidity, it was almost impossible to sneak up on a Tenno. Although, the Red Veil agents who had originally rescued me after the cascade bomb incident had managed it somehow… Regardless, I had only been out on two missions since I had acquired the Vectis Prime; having spent most of my time in my Liset. The Liset was an impenetrable fortress for anyone who wasn't a Tenno, it was completely invisible to any type of sensor – having been built to ferry Tenno assassins deep into Orokin fortresses – and allegedly could even become invisible itself. Nothing could find it to begin with, and even if it could nothing could get in. And yet… I still felt like I was being watched. I had already searched the interior of the Liset several times, and nothing had seemed out of place…

 _Perhaps whoever or whatever it is is invisible?_

I don't think anything can stay invisible for that long without energy restores…

 _What about an Ivara?_

Not even an Ivara could stay cloaked for the four hours we've been in deep space!

 _True… Are you sure you're actually being watched though? I don't feel anything other than your feeling of being watched…_

I don't know, but if there is something else on this ship, something so well hidden that neither Ordis nor us can find it, then meditating would be very risky…

 _Why?_

Because it would allow whatever or whoever it is to do more or less anything to either us or the ship before we regain consciousness.

 _True. But what else can we do? There aren't any more Red Veil to rescue for the time being, and the Lotus has us on hold ready for any other missions that should come up… All we can do is wait._

Are we not allowed to do our own missions?

 _No, we are. It's just the Lotus has specifically asked us to be ready to move on to a specific target as soon as she locates it. So at this particular point in time we need to be ready more than we need to be active._

Any idea what we're waiting for?

 _Nope, none at all…_

Any idea how long we'll be waiting for?

 _Nope, no-_

" _Tenno Alpha?"_ The Lotus' voice immediately alleviates the feeling of being watched.

"Yes Lotus?" In the first few days I had tried to be formal with the Guide of the Tenno, but for the most part she seemed to prefer to be relaxed. There was no need to be formal, since there was no-one around to tell us off for it, it was just our two minds joining to hers. I was almost comforting to have our consciousness's joined, it meant that I could feel her emotions. To me, emotions seemed odd; they were chemical signals that actually affected how the mind worked. They could, despite being chemical, somehow filter into the psyche and be transmitted over telepathic connections. I had none of my own, but the ones I could feel emanating from the Lotus' mind were caring and tender… almost motherly…

"I have found you a target; you are to move to the Io sector on Jupiter as soon as possible – I'm sure one of the others can give you the nav coordinates. The Corpus have just discovered another Tenno in cryo-stasis. The Corpus will be moving in troops to clear the way for a 'specialist team' who will be moving in within the hour."

"Understood. May I ask what sort of 'specialist team' we should be expecting?"

"You may, but I'm afraid I don't know… All I have been able to find out from hacking the Corpus Databases is that the team are coming from Jupiter and are assigned to something called the 'Zanuka Project'. I cannot find any details on troop numbers, armament or rank."

"Understood, will our extraction team arrive before theirs?"

"It should do, but none of the extraction teams are currently mobile. Both have taken heavy fire recently on missions. You will most likely need to hold off the Corpus for half an hour or more. Be careful Tenno."

With that the presence vanished, leaving me alone with Beta, and the feeling of being watched…

* * *

 _One, two, pop a few. Ninety-nine, one hundred!_

Beta?

 _Yes?_

Stop singing in my head.

 _Aww..._

I pull the trigger again, ending the life of another Crewman. From my position on top of the colossal defense cannon I can see almost every part of the platform on which we are positioned. The cryopod far below is defended by Isaac and Antonio, both of whom are slashing and shooting their way through the oncoming hordes of soldiers and robotics. Loki is somewhere on the city, causing havoc with technical things. It's because of him that the cannon I'm lying on is firing at the neighboring gas city, shattering its shields and shaking my aim… I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that since the cryopod is the primary objective, and since I am using a sniper rifle, its rather irritating that my combat efficiency is being hindered because he had to make _every single_ cannon fire at the other facility. Not that it is having a massive effect. I have several hundred kills at this stage, and my only real concern is running out of ammunition.

The Tenno extraction team has just left the relay, and will soon be here. There was a minor technical problem. Which is why we are now at the fifty-five minute mark. If they don't get here soon then that 'special team' is likely going to show up. If they come on foot then there won't be any problem, they will probably barely be noticed in the bloodbath below. Unfortunately, there is just about enough space on the platform for a corpus transport to fit in between the roof and the cryopod on the floor… I doubt the corpus would actually be mad enough to try it, but if they do… we have no heavy armaments, and Loki has left the turret control room in pieces so it will be impossible to re-target them. He says he's gone off after some data vault or something. Which would explain the radio silence.

* * *

There's only one other thing that's wrong… I still feel like I'm being watched. And at this stage it is really getting to me… It's not that the crewmen are aware of me, they've fired a few rounds at my position before giving up (or dying brutally). The crewmen don't bother me, its something else... something that seems to follow me wherever I go... something that is biding it's time, waiting for the opportune moment to strike... That's when I see it.

The entity is running along the outside of the city towards our balcony, and it appears to be some form of quadruped. I scope in on it with my Vectis Prime, and realize not only is it a quadruped it is also definitely a proxy of some sort. It has what looks like some sort of shoulder mounted – yep, its shoulder mounted missiles alright. I can tell because now there are missiles streaming from its back, obscuring it in smoke. I quickly warn Isaac and Antonio, giving them just enough time to take cover as the shower of explosives decimates everything around them.

Smoke hangs in the air around the cryopod, I can see it has sustained some damage too, but I can't see anything down there. Isaac and Antonio's signals are still strong though, so they're definitely alive. OK, one problem at a time. I turn my rifle towards the still running quadruped and quickly fire off a shot. I hit the proxy's leg and it flies off in a shower of sparks, the proxy itself nearly falling off the wall. Somehow it is still gripping onto the wall, now hobbling at right angles to the ground – and almost at the platform we are on. I shoot it again, this time I hit its head and while the damage is barely superficial, the impact is enough to stagger the proxy. Fortunately, it hasn't quite reached our platform yet, so when the impact knocks it off the wall it falls straight down. I follow it with my scope, feeling triumphant as it plummets into the depths, hurtling towards the surface of Jupiter many miles below.

I'm about to turn my attention to my team-mates when I feel a colossal impact and both I and whatever hit me, tumble the distance down to the platform. As soon as we land I roll away, kicking out at whatever it is. My foot connects with something and I look over to see what it is; it's another of those quadrupedal proxies, also equipped with dual missile launchers. Great! I take a swing at it with my heat sword but it launches itself backwards, evading the blow. It rears up and is about to fire some kind of weapon at me, when a large protrusion appears in the side of its 'head'. I step closer so that I can see more clearly through the fog and realize that it is in fact quite a large protrusion, a roughly Galatine sized, and shaped, protrusion. Heck, I didn't think it possible to accurately throw such a large weapon... but somehow the Rhino has managed it. Probably saving my life in the process...

I'm about to thank him, when another one lands. Another follows in rapid succession, and another. And then comes a mocking voice;

" _Tenno? Can you hear me? You've all been naughty little betrayers, haven't you?_ _Did you really think you could steal from the Corpus?"_

Isaac and I exchange glances through the fog as we hear another set of impacts, signaling the arrival of yet more of the proxies. They must have come around from the other side of the platform while the one I shot acted as a diversion. Bloody good diversion too, we still can't see down here due to all of the smoke, and I have no idea how the proxies can see because the heat trails are wreaking havoc with infra-red visuals as well.

Then an arc of electricity from the strange weapon Antonio uses cuts through the fog, enveloping one of the proxies in sparks and yet more smoke. That's when all hell breaks loose, the proxies lock onto the nearest target and open fire. Instinctively I dive off the upper part of the platform, evading the worst of it. Then I quickly launch myself to the side as a volley of missiles shrieks through the fog, effectively removing the piece of platform I had just handed on and revealing a second layer below. I tumble into it as the ground shudders under the impact of yet more missiles. There's no way we can fight these things. One or two shouldn't be a problem, but in a group they're invincible.

Whipping out my codex scanner I point it upwards through the floor of the platform we were on, and to my despair I see that a few of the proxies have gathered around the one Isaac impaled and seem to be reviving it. I see Isaac's icon on my HUD indicate that he has gone down, but when I look for him with the scanner I cannot see him anywhere. How can you hide a Rhino warframe?! Then Antonio goes down, I search for him with the scanner and spot him at my level, still firing defiantly with some form of pistol. A Lex, perhaps? It's hard to tell with the scanner, but it doesn't matter. I rush through the door to the room I'm in and out into the corridor, take one turn and then dive to the side to get to Antonio. There is one proxy still harassing him, but with each shot another important-looking component flies off, staggering the robot.

I quickly approach and raise my hand, activating the emergency revive nanites built into my hand. After a few seconds he's up again, and he fires one last shot at the mutilated proxy before scooping up his primary weapon and beckoning for me to follow. We step out of the corridor into absolute mayhem, torrents of plasma sweep the platform, leaving only the cryopod unharmed. Isaac has managed to get himself back up and is firing from cover somewhere on the higher platform. Missiles are flying all over the place, apparently targeting the regular Corpus forces as well. They seem to be putting up a fight, but not with much success...

I raise my scanner to my face and through it I see even more of the missile bearing robots leaping onto the platform, now coming from both sides and above. The Corpus forces are being pushed back and hunted down, and the quadrupeds are surrounding the cryopod! I bullet jump up onto the higher part of the platform and de-leg the first proxy that I can clearly see with my Vectis. It screeches an electronic warning and to its compatriots as the second shot blows off its other front leg. Then some sort of electrical wave travels over the ground from behind me, and I realize Antonio has activated his 4th ability. It seems to stun the gathered proxies, but barely damages them. So I amend that with a few quick shots, 1 shot, 1 leg. Soon less than half of the proxies are intact and I'm beginning to feel victorious, when Isaac goes down again. Then the air fills with the shrieks of missiles and the ground begins to shake. I look up, and see a swarm of missiles heading for us, but they are also spreading out, there isn't going to be any way to dodge those! Antonio tries to shoot down a few with his electric rifle, and succeeds, but to no avail. I simply stare as several hundred missiles rush towards us. We're doomed.

* * *

 _Get up!_

I open my eyes, and look around; the ground is littered with pieces of robotics and spot fires, the odd crater decorating the ground sporadically.

I look around, and then attempt to rise, but to both Beta's and my own disappointment, my body collapses back into a pile of circuitry. I look at it for a second, realizing that the scrap in this pile seems to have been cut, not ripped off by a bullet...

In fact, the whole pile of pieces seems to have been surgically removed from the rest of whatever proxy it was attached to... Whatever weapon it was that did this, it was far sharper than even Isaac's Galatine... I see a strange looking throwing knife protruding from one of the robot's sensors. Arrows pin corpses and proxies to the ground, and all is still.

 _Alpha! Get up, now. Or I swear I'm going to... wait, what...?_

We barely have time to admire the destruction before, I see him; the dark red and black figure approaches through the fog, a scythe held loosely at his side and throwing knives holstered on his hips... Who on Earth is that?

The mysterious figure stops and looks down at me, and then placing his scythe on the ground he raises his hand, the mist that comes from it is a dark brown color though, not the usual green of healing nanobots. And then the world goes black as I pass out. Again. I briefly wonder why someone had massacred the proxies just to knock me out, but then my conscious fades into a dreamless sleep as the gas takes effect...

* * *

End of Part 9

 **Author's note:**

 **Sorry I took so long over getting this chapter out, education kinda hit me like a truck and I forgot about this completely. I will try and release chapters on a regular basis, but there may be some delays due to excessive coursework or field trips. On account of being quite new to this whole writing thing, any and all reviews are appreciated, especially if they contain suggested improvements.**


	10. Captured?

The Corpus child's questions had made me question myself and my motives, but it was not until I met him (whose name shall not be spoken) that I decided to do something about it. And that was when everything started to go wrong…

* * *

 **Chapter 10: Captured?**

 _Alpha! Could you please and kindly leave your eye open next time you pass out? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to not be able to see but still be conscious? Do you have…_

The annoying sound of Beta nagging me cuts off abruptly, and I feel a sort of silence in my head. It's as if I am alone, finally. But where could Beta be then?! I open my eye and go to sit up, but a firm hand pushes me gently back down onto the bunk on which I had been sleeping.

"You are awake, finally."

"Who are you?" I telepath back. I cannot quite seem to lock onto this persons' mind, it seems cloaked in mist or fog of some sort.

"I will answer your question shortly, is the other one inside your head asleep yet?"

I quickly check, and find that Beta's consciousness is in fact dreaming, although what he is dreaming of is beyond me. It seems as though he is a child in his dream, aware but unable to defend himself in what I quickly realize is a nightmare. He is being experimented on by some people in white and golden robes.. or maybe they're lab coats?

"He is asleep; did you do that?"

"Yes, I did. I'm afraid I cannot trust him like I trust you, and if he were to tell your 'brothers' what he would hear from me; they would cut you down without a second thought."

"Okay, so now that Beta is asleep, will you tell me who you are?" I'm beginning to get the impression I'm not going to be brutally killed by whoever my kidnapper is. Which is nice.

"I have no name, but by now the Lotus and your self-righteous 'brethren' will know of me as The Stalker."

"Speaking of my brothers, where are they? Are they alright?" I realize that the last time I saw either Antonio or Isaac was in the middle of the firefight with the quadrupedal proxies. Not somewhere anyone would wish to stay for any period of time without much better shielding…

"Your 'brothers' are currently in cryo-sleep. They are safe. I will give you the pods when you go, but they must not learn of this place."

"Thank you. Now, what did you need with me?" I'm still a little bit on edge, but my kidnapper – this Stalker person – has just said he will be letting me go and that he will let me take the others with me when I go. So presumably, whatever he wants me for is not going to be too bad…

"I had hoped to discuss some things with you; to make you an offer, and to make some things clear to you."

"So, you just want to talk?" I ask, almost letting a little of my incredulity slip into my telepathic voice.

"Not quite, but yes. For the most part. I thought, since I had saved your life and the lives of your 'brothers', you would hear me out?"

This is true I realize, he had saved our lives, those proxies had still been arriving on the platform when I had passed out, and when I awoke every single one was destroyed…. Did he do all of that alone?!

"I haven't even thanked you for that, have I? How impolite of me; Thank you for saving the lives of my brothers and I, we owe you."

"It is simply my way of paying back the debt I owe you, although it is nowhere near repaid."

"The debt _you_ owe _me_?"

"Indeed. How much do you recall from before you entered cryo-sleep?"

"Absolutely nothing. Like nothing at all, I don't even know who I was before"

"Ah… that is… unfortunate…"

We both sit in awkward silence, mulling the situation over. This shadow-cloaked assassin in the strange warframe owes me a debt of some sort from before I entered cryo-sleep. Bearing in mind that saving the lives of four Tenno 'is nowhere near repaid.'… it must be a pretty impressive debt. What on Earth could be worth _more_ than the lives of four Tenno? Unless he has been adding interest to the debt since I entered cryo-sleep, I cannot think of anything that could compare. A life is the ultimate price, is it not?

"Damian" he finally says, interrupting my thoughts

"What?"

"Your name was Damian, before you entered cryo-sleep. You remembered it even after the experiments, even after the transfer…"

"What experiments?"

"The experiments that made you into an almost-Tenno, and the other ones… if you don't remember, it is probably best I do not tell you… It rather upset you last time you found out…"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, last time you found out what had been done to you an entire facility went off the grid, all that was found afterwards was wreckage…"

"I destroyed a facility in my past life? So what? I can destroy any facility now as well, provided I can access the reactor…"

"You don't understand. It was before you… it was before you became like you are now…"

"What is that supposed to mean?" I almost growl at him; my temper is beginning to flare.

"I mean; it was… no it is probably best if I leave you to find out."

So, clearly this man knew me in my last life, but he refuses to tell me who I was other than my name. He also refuses to tell me what 'experiments' I underwent before I entered cryo-sleep. It seems, almost like he is scared of me… perhaps I can use that to my advantage? Or maybe I should be reasonable… He is still clearly much more capable than a full squad of Tenno, perhaps it is best not to anger him. Also, he had saved our lives, so I could at least try to be grateful…

"Ok, if you won't tell me, will you at least give me a clue?"

"No."

"Why n..."

"I will do better than that." He pauses again, as if in thought. "Stay here, I will be back momentarily"

With that vanishes! No warning, no change in his kneeling stance, nothing. He must've teleported. But that warframe he wore, it definitely wasn't an Ash or a Loki, and there's no line of sight to anything in the room I'm in… I quickly glance around the room, taking in my surroundings; The room itself is Tenno in architecture, but seems to be more… angular and jagged, almost more sinister. The bed I am lying on appears to be some sort of medical bunk, nothing special. But comfy nonetheless. Other than the low-bed the room is devoid of furniture, nothing of any significance is to be seen. I bet there would be secret compartments somewhere - there almost always are in a Tenno owned room - but I have no time to look for them. He reappears seconds later, holding a small holo-disk. He touches my hand, transmitting several sets of coordinates to the holo-emitter embedded in my palm.

"When you feel you are ready, find these vaults, and remove the data. You will need to piece together the data from all the vaults for it to make sense. I will warn you; you will not like what you see…"

"So, you'll tell me, just not in person?"

"In essence yes. Before you go, I wish to make some things clear."

Uh-oh… this is where things get interesting…

"Go on…?"

"Firstly, I would like to make it clear that while my loyalty is to you I am still bound by my oaths, and as such will have to refuse any requests that would hinder my mission. Secondly, while I am your friend, the Lotus must never find this out, and as such I will pretend to hunt you on occasion just to keep up appearances."

"Your loyalty is to me?!" I blurt out, before he has quite finished speaking.

"That is correct."

"So, you when you 'hunt' me what am I supposed to do?"

"Kill me," He replies bluntly. "I can re-form. You, on the other hand, cannot."

"You can re-form?"

"Yes. Almost all the Orokin guardians can. That includes your 'brothers', so if they 'die' don't fret; they will return."

"But… I can't 're-form'?"

"You are not an Orokin guardian, Tenno or otherwise."

"So, you're Tenno, but I'm not?"

"I was a Lower Guardian, a bodyguard. At one point I was bodyguard to the Emperor himself. I was his bodyguard when the Tenno betrayed the Empire. I am not Tenno, nor do I wish to be. You, on the other hand, were created as a… different type of Tenno. Not Tenno in the traditional sense of the word... more of an experimental prototype akin to a Tenno"

"How am I different?"

"You do not want to know, not yet."

"I do!"

"Trust me, you do no- "

"If you won't tell me I'll ask the Lotus!"

"NO!" He shouts immediately. I jerk my head in surprise, having not realized how loud someone could get telepathically. I brace myself, but the next sentence is barely a whisper… "If she discovers what you truly are, she will seek to destroy you! You are biologically, physiologically and psychologically close enough to a Tenno not to be discovered, but if she suspects anything… she knows what to look for. Do not tempt fate, because I'm not sure if I can save you from her. And I know full well, I cannot withstand losing my only remaining brother."

I stare at him for a second. He called me brother like he actually meant it, not with that condescending tone of voice with which he refers to the other Tenno…. Can he really mean? Like, a biological brother? This man is my literal brother?!

"You are my brother?" I half-demand.

He pauses for a moment, thinking. I can almost sense his mind travelling along the different potential routes of what he can reveal without putting me in harm's way. I can almost hear the cogs whirring, and then they stop.

"I have said too much." Just like that he's moved on… even I couldn't be _that_ cold towards a literal flesh-and-blood brother, could I?

"But you sai- "

"Come. I will show you where your ship awaits, I have already loaded your friends cryopods onto it. Each cryopod has the coordinates of where their Lisets are hidden. But now you must go."

He moves suddenly, grasping my arm and teleporting both of us to an ancient looking docking facility. I can see my Liset there, glinting slightly due to the buildup of ice. We must be really deep in space, because I can't see any planets I recognize… My Liset's entry hatch spins to receive me, and The Stalker gently, but firmly, moves me towards it. I step into it and take hold of the handgrips. As I turn to look at him, he whispers some last words into my mind.

"I am your brother. I will see you again, but for now farewell." And with that he kneels and vanishes, leaving only the lingering shadow-smoke that accompanies him to fade into the thin atmosphere of the hangar. It seems to be Tenno in design, but… older?

I stare at where he knelt, finally realizing; I am not alone, I have an actual brother – not that lunatic who I share a psyche with – an actual brother… Not a brother in arms, but an actual flesh and blood brother… One who is currently up to his eyeballs in trouble, and is no doubt about to drag me into the conspiracy with him. I get the feeling this may not have been an uncommon occurrence in my previous life either.

* * *

 _Uuuuggghhhh…. What time is it?_ The ever irritating voice of Beta re-emerges within my head, as the other lunatic within my skull awakes, hopefully unaware of what has just transpired.

"It's about time you stopped snoozing. We have work to do." I reply, glancing at the two frost-coated pods that are blocking the corridors of my Liset.

 _Don't be silly, I can't fall asleep in your head. Sleep is a biological thing._

"Well, what do you call what you just woke up from then?" I retort, feeling a small glimmer of satisfaction in the knowledge that Mr. Know-it-all is going to absolutely freak when he realizes he's not sure what's going on. And sure enough…

 _Wait, what?! I slept? That's not physically possible. What the hell is going on?!_

"Chill, you just spent a while snoring in my mind. It's no big deal." I know my acting nonchalant is going to set him off…

 _NO BIG DEAL?! You think it's no big deal for an entity incapable of sleep to do the very thing he cannot do? I literally just did the impossible!_

"Yea, and if you weren't so lazy you wouldn't have slept through it all."

 _Shut up Alpha, and tell me what you did!_

Oh crap, I need to come up with a cover story for what just transpired. I had probably been unconscious for quite some time. Ah, not good…

"I… I errm… I slept too. I had this really weird dream as wel-"

 _Yes, I can see... A dream where you sat and stared at some sort of weird Tenno for half an hour in an abandoned dojo. Come on, I might not know what you said, but we can both use your eye and your memory._

Well… shit.

"He wanted me to make a bargain to betray the Lotus, in exchange he'd give us back the hostages."

 _The hostages. Hmpf. I've heard that he's good, he almost got Isaac the other day. But I doubt even he could defeat and capture four Tenno at once._

"Beta, don't you remember how the proxies basically defeated us? And what do you mean he 'almost got Isaac'?"

 _Oh, yea. That sounds just like one of them; wait until they're weak and then drop in and kidnap them before they can revive! Bloody cowards. I mean he appeared out of nowhere, shot Isaac and left him to die. Fortunately he had enough energy for a revive - else we'd be hunting for his distress signal right now.._

"He saved our lives. You should at least be grateful for that." I make a mental note to ask him later about why he referred to the Stalker as 'one of them', are there more shadow-cloaked assassins looking out for me? Do I have _more_ brothers?

 _We would've reformed. There's nothing in the system that can kill a Tenno long-term._

"Really?" I ask, but in my mind I make a note of the fact that Beta doesn't seem to know that I - allegedly at least - can't re-form. That is nice to know, but also very inconvenient. "So there's no way whatsoever to kill a Tenno?"

 _I exaggerate. Anywhere with sufficiently high radiation can screw up the re-forming process and effectively kill a Tenno. Oh, and you can get assimilated into the infestation. Or fall into the sun, or the vacuum of space, or if you're really unlucky you can be 'integrated' into one of these crazy projects the assorted factions have going on._

"Crazy projects? Like the Zanuka project or whatever it was called?"

 _Yea. Couldn't you see that those proxies had warframe technology built into them? The Corpus don't have the technology to produce such agile robots._

"Say What?!"

 _Those robot wolf things with the missiles, they were made using pieces of Tenno. Most likely the Corpus had been scavenging every cryopod they could find and got lucky on a few… The Tenno they take from cryo-sleep remain unconscious… but if a awakened Tenno is 'integrated' they will remain aware of what their components are doing, but be unable to control it. It's a really really awful way to…_

That's when something clicks. Without any explanation to Beta, I turn and rush back to the interior of the Liset, squeezing quickly past the cryopod in the left corridor. I race around the corner to the blast door, and feel my heart sink. There isn't a third cryopod! There're only two cryopods. I can see Antonio in the one I just passed. Isaac is in the other. But where's Loki? Shit…

* * *

I quickly message Loki, and upon receiving no reply yell at Ordis to set a course for Jupiter. If Loki has been captured…

There's no response. "Beta, what's happened to Ordis?"

 _He's logged off. I'll restart him. You get those two out of Cryo. We have some rescuing to do!_

I step to Antonio's pod and type in the standard code to open it. For the first time in five minutes something goes right, and the pod begins the thawing process. I move to Isaac's pod and repeat the process. I glance down and see that The Stalker has carved the coordinates of the Lisets onto the reinforced glass on the top of the pod. Impressive, bearing in mind how strong that glass stuff is….

I'm dimly aware of Beta yelling at Ordis through my head, but I ignore it and move to navigation. I enter the first set of coordinates and then put the second into the ship's memory banks. In my frustration I'm about to turn on the manual piloting when Ordis grouchily agrees to take us to 'the middle of bloody nowhere'.

Antonio has just woken up, and upon realizing this isn't his ship has let out a string of curses so foul that I can feel the contained atmosphere turning blue from it. Isaac is even less patient and, sensing the frenzied tension in the small space, punches straight through the glass of his cryopod and hauls his colossal frame out through the gap – stretching the metal bars on either side. I'm so glad I wrote down the coordinates before I woke him…

Both Tenno join me by navigation just as we blur into the void, and we exchange glances as we drop out of what is practically hyperspace - only to be greeted to the sight of two Grineer galleons circling the small black and grey coloured Liset. Bloody marvelous! At least Stalker was kind enough to the others to put their weapons into the pods with them.

Its barely half an hour later when we leave the two floundering galleons - spewing oxygen, fuel rods and other important looking bits into the vacuum of deep space – and turn our ships towards the second set of coordinates. Both ships are now devoid of life, and bearing in mind the state of their reactors, they will probably be sufficiently swamped with radiation to make them unusable for a few centuries. Space and time blurs and this time we see that the second Liset is intact and undiscovered. I quickly jettison Antonio through my ship's airlock, roughly towards his Liset, and watch as he skillfully redirects himself in the zero-gravity – despite his shields flaring from the cold - towards his own ship's airlock. Seconds later he's on board and the third Liset's engine's power up – accompanied by the sound of distant telepathic swearing.

We quickly arrive at Jupiter and locate the site of our last battle. The colossal city is listing heavily and smoke is obscuring most of it, but we find the platform we had occupied before. Our cephalons turn the ships and allow us to 'combat deploy' which consists of jumping from the airlock on the now-vertical ships to the platform a couple of meters below. I hear Beta cheering as the three of us land in sync, barely a meter from the pod. I move to it and check it over, it seems to have been tampered with... but its intact. That's when I notice; it is now empty… Not good. At the moment though, we have more pressing concerns. The whole gas city is falling apart, and there's a good chance Loki is still aboard it somewhere, since his Liset is still orbiting Jupiter and scanning this particular city – waiting for him to approach a landing platform or edge so it can swoop down and retrieve him. The question is; where? The city is one of the larger ones, probably 20km across the central segment. If we weren't in such a hurry, I'd stop to admire the magnificence of it. It may not have the golden splendor of an Orokin Space-City, but for sheer size and complexity it was not far off…

As I jumped I had noticed that there was still a significant quantity of debris on the platform, but as I move through it now – at ground level – I realize that actually, in some places the piles of robotic limbs and components are about waist high! Stalker must've really screwed this 'Zanuka project' over, if he destroyed so many of their troops… Then, almost randomly, I'm drawn to one of the hulls. The proxy that once operated it has been destroyed, it's processors impaled by a large arrow, but the shell… The shell does indeed look a lot more organic than normal Corpus proxies. Perhaps Beta was right, perhaps these are made of Tenno… What a horrible thought. I was running a hand over the hull when Beta interrupts my thoughts;

 _Hey, why don't you scan them, since you don't seem to believe me that'll prove it._

"Does it need proving?"

 _Yes, I'm not completely certain either._

I produce a codex scanner and quickly skim it over the hull of the proxy. It beeps in acknowledgement once or twice and then fades, it's battery used up by transmitting the data to my Liset's data-banks via a void transfer. I send a querying grunt in Beta's direction within my mind.

 _The scanners are one-use. We'll learn what it found out once we get back to the Liset. For now, focus, Loki is still out there somewhere._

I move to catch up with the others when I notice something else is downloading itself to my onboard computers… I quickly check it and find, to my surprise, that I've somehow managed to download a few blueprints for some sort of weapon called a 'Detron'. Every time I pass the Hull of a destroyed proxy – a Zanuka – I see a new download start. I have roughly enough of the one-use blueprints to make about thirty of these 'Detrons' already… I wonder if they're worth anything.

We advance deeper into the now-deserted city. There's no sign of any living thing except the odd blood splatter on a wall. Some are still dripping, so presumably someone was here recently. I also notice, that actually, the city's automatic recycling systems either cannot reach out to the platform… or cannot recycle the proxies due to their Warframe technology. I suspect it to be the latter, seeing as there were no other corpses except for the quadrupeds on the platform. I hope that the cause of the recent blood splatters was the occupant of the cryopod, and that he or she went to find Loki. Or perhaps he came back to help the slumbering Tenno….

We keep walking, completely unaffected by the increasing amounts of smoke thanks to our Warframes. That was another brilliant feature of the armor, it allowed the occupant to breath in more or less any atmosphere, be it the gas-rich stratosphere of Jupiter or the corrosive atmosphere of Ceres. There were a few things that a Warframe could not process, but unfortunately the different factions all had access to one or the other of them. The Corpus used the original Orokin gas, and the Grineer had produced some sort of cheap replica that they couldn't afford to put in all of their outposts. The Infested of course, used their own spores, those things could chew through metal, and digest more or less anything. The smoke would probably not be of any concern to a crewman either, for a short while at least, but they had very limited life support – being of little worth to The Company. The proxies on the other hand… Their optics got coated with soot, their thermal sensors went haywire, and they mistook every shadow for an enemy. This of course, led to a rather amusing situation whenever someone set fire to a Corpus base, but did make it a lot harder to infiltrate one as well, since the whole base was in a state of high alert because the proxies were collectively reporting hundreds of thousands of intruders every minute.

Antonio was leading our group, and presumably had some idea of where to go, since he hadn't stopped to ask us for directions or advice. He was probably heading to the reactor actually… Since the whole city was on fire, either Loki had released an Ember Warframe user, or he'd messed up the main reactor. Based on the frightening levels of radiation – it was probably the latter. Ember users were apparently quite fun to be around, but they tended to adopt a slightly pyromaniac approach to life. "If its flammable, it should burn. If it isn't flammable, make it flammable and then make it burn." Was the way Isaac had described their attitude. From what I'd heard, he probably wasn't far off...

I find myself wishing I'd gotten a look at what Warframe the Tenno inside the cryo-pod was wearing, since it would give us clues of what to look for. It was actually more or less impossible to track a Tenno due to our design, but since we were fighting a war against impossible odds most Tenno had been ordered to leave 'tracks'. They were, essentially, a terror tactic – a 'look who was here' for the most lethal and undetectable assassins in the known universe. It would, in time, cause the other factions to fear us enough to inconvenience them. Tracks usually consisted of Rhino footprints in solid steel floors, crescent shaped slashes in walls from an Exalted Blade, or just something simple like no functioning electronics in an ENTIRE city. Apparently Loki tended to leave a base more or less intact, the only exception being a minor re-arrangement of the buttons on the reactor or a slight reprogramming of the automated defenses. He always told us when some poor soldier had pressed the button to power up the reactor and almost died of shock when the self-destruct sequence announced it had begun (they usually died minutes later anyway, either due to the reactor going off, or just simply by being executed by some superior somewhere who had a low tolerance for 'those idiots that just press buttons without checking what they do'. So far it had happened three times, but if we rescued Loki now, then it would likely become a trend.

Not that we ever complained. It was always refreshing to hear that reinforcements had arrived at such and such a base, powered the reactor up higher to keep the place running with so much more demand on it, and blown themselves sky high. Some of the reactors were nuclear, and they weren't much fun, but the void reactors were great. They tended to take out the base, and the surrounding few miles of whatever environment they were in. Loki had shown us the one time, when a void reactor had gone off, how it had actually melted most of the neighboring galleon at the shipyards. There was literally nothing left except the front hundred meters or so of the ship that was just hanging there on the only remaining crane. The catch was that the reactor had been almost 2km away!

We trudged on, if we knew where Loki might be, we would've run. But as was, we had no idea where to go, and so we walked. Eventually, we arrived at the reactor, swore a bit, and announced that Loki had not done this. Antonio examined a console and then said something about phasic energy transfers and wormholes - that went completely over my head - and Issac nodded and agreed that Loki couldn't have done this. That meant that the other Tenno was free, and presumably knew enough about reactors to know how they worked – and how to stop them working without vaporizing half the city…. This was one of the prototype Oxium reactors the Corpus were building, and since none of us knew anything about them – other than that they were volatile (and apparently involved radiation somehow - based on the extremely high radiation levels nearby), we would be glad to have someone who did.

We kept searching, eventually splitting up. We'd checked what seemed like the whole city over, every corridor, every control room, the foundries, even the living quarters. Nothing. No sign of Loki or the other Tenno. When I say no sign, I mean we hadn't seen them. We'd seen plenty of evidence of their recent presence. There were still sparking pieces of machinery that had been ripped from the walls, and claw marks melted into the ceilings, floors and every other available surface. Presumably the new Tenno had a pair of Venka, since nothing else could leave claw marks like that… It looked like a crazy person had been through here, attacking everything like a Moa in smoke!

We had split up by now, so I was following the almost-comically overdone 'tracks' left by the Venka wielding Tenno, Antonio was checking out the control rooms again, and Isaac had gone to destroy something to relive stress. We still hadn't seen any life signs. I had encountered one proxy, a Moa that was hopping its way futilely along the corridor on one leg, the other one nowhere to be seen. I had ended it quickly, wondering half amused, half afraid, about what one Earth could rip the leg off a Moa. Because it had not been a clean cut, there had been wires trailing behind the robot…

I flinched. What was that? The sudden silence was deafeningly loud, now that the alarms that had been constantly blaring had been shut off. I realized after a few seconds that actually, it wasn't silence. There was the gently sound of fire crackling nearby, and off in the distance there was something… something else. I decided to investigate and broke into a run, navigating through the convoluted mess of corridors to try and reach the place the sound had originated from. As I got closer I rejoined the 'tracks' left by the Venka wielding Tenno, and noticed with satisfaction that some of the gashes in the walls and floor were still red hot. I was close. And whoever this Tenno was, they clearly had enough energy to be channeling through their Venka the whole time, which was quite impressive…

* * *

I sprint along the corridor, not struggling in the slightest to follow the ridiculously overdone trail. The smoke here is much thinner, almost a mist rather than smoke. I can hear only the sounds of the fires and the dulled thudding of my own feet, and then from somewhere nearby I hear a scream. Not a surprised scream, or even a scared scream. This is a scream of pure, unadulterated rage. And it is way too close for comfort. I listen and realize that I can hear what sounds like an army of Supras, chattering out plasma. And then one by one they stop. I accelerate again, leaping over a collapsed section of ceiling which is so riddled with plasma burns that it's more like a ventilation grate than a solid surface… I sprint on, anything that is killing corpus Techs in those quantities is worth investigating!

But as I draw nearer I hear the scream again, much further away this time. I'm sprinting, so what on Earth is the source of the screams? It must be very agile to be able to outrun a Tenno, especially an Excalibur… I'm closing on where I heard the second scream from when I almost trip over something on the floor. I realize that my optics didn't even pick it up… and that's when Loki's invisibility fades…

There is such a thing as an attractive scar, but only one or two. Loki, on the other hand, is going to have about a billion of them, and they won't be attractive, assuming he survives this. I immediately stretch out my hand and begin to revive him, hoping I'm not too late. It takes longer than usual, but after almost a minute Loki moves, it's more of a twitch, but it's progress. I continue to heal him, and slowly he regains articulation of his limbs. I can see the healing nanites slowly trying to repair the burns that coat Loki's warframe, more like a solid sheet than a set of separate marks caused by individual plasmas. He tests each finger, one at a time. After almost 2 minutes he finally speaks, it's more of a telepathic croak than actual speech;

"Alpha…. save her…"

"Save who?"

"The Tenno we woke up; the Corpus are trying to take her…"

"Ok, stay here."

I quickly telepath Isaac and Antonio to see if they can get here to help, or maybe even cut off the retreating kidnappers, unfortunately they're both miles away – literally, this city is huge. I can't hear any sounds of conflict anymore, although whether that's because the Corpus are all dead, or because the Tenno is dead, remains to be seen. I sprint off, simply following the claw marks that still decorate the walls.

This other Tenno must have really awful hand to eye coordination if they manage to do so much damage to the walls… Or maybe they're just venting, when I woke up it was just confusion, but I didn't wake up surrounded by the bodies of several hundred proxies made of mutilated Tenno... I'm no expert, but that could probably stress someone a bit, right? I mean, I'm sure _some_ people wake up with no memory of where they are and surrounded by the mutilated parts of the bodies of people who were once their family – but have now been turned into killing machines - and are completely fine, but I suspect the majority aren't quite sane after such an experience. Not that I'm saying anyone who isn't fazed by such is sane to begin with, but the point still stands…

I looked up from my ruminations and realized I was nearing the end of this corridor, and it opened to the outside. I must be getting close, and since I hadn't yet bumped into the other Tenno, I could only assume the Corpus had captured her and were taking her somewhere. The constant claw marks had stopped too…

I skid around the corner, pulling out my Vectis Prime and scoping in on the first sign of movement. I'm spot on, the movement is some sort of heavily armored MOA-like proxy. I pull the trigger and see it's shields flicker out of existence. I fire again, even while marveling at the shield strength required to protect against a round from my Vectis, and this time an entire leg is blown off. That's better. I reload and scope in, and this time I search for any sort of Tenno like thing. I scan over the now alerted crewmen who are staring around wildly as the now-one legged MOA thing flounders around trying to locate a target. That's when I see her, I have no idea what Warframe she's wearing, but it is a majestic looking blue sort of thing with a tail, and it's completely covered in blood and burns. I get the feeling that most of the blood is not hers. She's currently being dragged, semi-conscious by two soldiers. The rifle in my hand barks twice, almost of its own accord, and both crewmen hit the deck – their heads now more or less nonexistent. I think quickly, and then do the only thing I can; I frisbee-throw a team energy restore, the only one I have, in that general direction. It's a good throw, and despite the fact that it falls short, she's still within the radius when the burst of void energy lights up the platform. I see her stand up, still injured. Does she have any healing abilities? I had hoped she would have, since I didn't have any health restores… It looks like she doesn't, but she staggers over to one of the crewmen – one who seems to have been blinded for a second by the flash of void energy, a second too long. I watch as the energy claws form themselves around the Warframe's fingers, and then as she punches straight through the dazed crewman's chest. He falls soundlessly to the ground, and I watch in awe as I realize that not only has she literally ripped his heart out, but that doing so seems to have healed her. This is going to be messy…

Then she becomes a blur, almost teleporting between the crewmen and the fountains of blood and oil…

 _Wait, what?_

The second blow connects with the base of my skull, knocking me out cleanly. The last thing I hear before I black out – for what seems like the hundredth time this week – is Beta demanding I pass out with my eye open. The screams and slaughter intensifies on the other side of the docking platform, but I hear none of it as I slide into unconsciousness. Again.

* * *

I open my eye. And do not like what I see. The majestic blue Warframe is being dragged by two more crewmen, again coated in a thick layer of blood. Very little of it being hers. I realize I'm on the floor a lot closer to some sort of transport, a transport she's being dragged into by her captors. I try to move and find that I'm unable to, although why I can't move I can't tell yet. I see some executive or something yelling orders as smoke belches from some part of the city below us.

"… don't care if we lose him, if we put both on the same ship then they'll be impossible to contain."

That sounds promising for me, but not for her. That means the transport is going to leave soon…

I black out again.

* * *

When I awake, I see carnage. The first transport has already lifted off, and is struggling away from the platform belching smoke as it goes. A second transport, this one intended for me no doubt, is in the process of being ripped apart by explosions on the landing pad. Good. But the blue Warframe wearing Tenno, she must be on the first one. I try to get up, and feel some sort of binding snap as I stand. I stretch quickly, feeling several more bindings snap satisfyingly loudly. Antonio blurs past in front of me – this time because he's moving fast with his speed ability, not because I'm being knocked out – and I stagger forwards, drawing my exalted blade. I aim roughly for the departing transport and fire three quick slashes. With some degree of grim satisfaction, I see that I opened a triangular hole in the hull – quite good bearing in mind it must already be a good 100 meters or so from the platform I'm on.

I draw back to swing another energy slash at the departing transport when a volley of missiles lands nearby and knocks me off my feet. I turn to see what the target was and see Isaac firing at one of those armored MOA-like proxies, which is spewing more missiles towards him – he's protected by his Iron Skin though. I'm not. I stand shakily, and move to raise my blade again; only to be knocked off my feet by the charge of a different coloured one of those mega MOAs. I stand again and vengefully bring the glowing blade down, cutting through its armour and shields and cleaving it cleanly in two. I'm starting to get thoroughly peeved off...

I turn, looking for the transport and see it moving off quite some distance away, then I realize it's going to be out of range! I sprint towards the edge, ducking under another barrage of missiles from another one of those MOAs and slash desperately in the vague direction of the transport. My energy waves almost all miss; the only one that hits slices into a wall and doesn't seem to damage anything of importance. Damn!

"Isaac? Was she on the transport?"

"I don't know. We'll see in a minute; we still have these tin cans to deal with! Come help"

I realize he's right, there's nothing I can do. So I launch myself whole-heartedly into the one-sided battle. The armored MOAs are annoying, but they don't actually do enough damage to get through our shields. Our weapons on the other hand…

The slaughter is over. Everything on the platform is now very much dead. Unfortunately, there isn't an amazing claw-wielding Tenno on the platform. And that's not because Loki disarmed everything that moved, its simply because she isn't here. They took her. And we have no idea where they took her to... That's when the realization sinks in; the Corpus lost a whole load of Tenno based proxies on this city, and they will need to replace them…. We have to find her!

End of Chapter 10

 **Author's Note:**

 **I've managed to locate myself a proofreader, which means that there will likely be a slightly longer delay between chapters than before. She's awesome though, and between the two of us we should be able to iron out almost every grammatical error. So in actual fact, chapters will come out much more legible and hopefully more fun to read – which I think is a fair balance.**

 **Other than that, if you've ever stopped and looked around on the Corpus Gas City tileset, you would've noticed that the cities are absolutely colossal. I have – for the purposes of the story and to accentuate the search – made them even bigger, but it would not surprise me at all to find that they could be of a similar size to what I wrote them as if players could actually access all of the city… And as for the reason why the city is on fire and falling apart; it's a combination of the fact that the new Tenno sabotaged the reactor, and that Loki set all the turrets to fire at the other cities – which no doubt would've returned fire after a while.**

 **And the 'Heavily Armoured MOAs' are Bursas. You can't just leave the alarms going on a Corpus tileset and not have several of those show up to make your mission more difficult.**


	11. Valkyr

I had often wondered to myself; why did the Lotus seem so concerned about the welfare of her warriors and their warframes? They would reform relatively quickly… Was it genuine concern for her troops or perhaps some sort of motherly bond – assuming she was actually female and not some sort of AI? I know the truth now, it only pretended to care. It only really cared about the Tenno, if a warframe was lost, so what? It would reform. The warframes were expendable. I was expendable.

* * *

 **Chapter 11: Valkyr**

I was faced with a choice; I could unravel my own mysteries by tracking down the data vaults my brother had given me the coordinates to… OR I could join the others in trying to track down the kidnapped warframe. I could only choose one. If I waited too long then the data vaults would be reorganized as they were every few months to prevent structured data theft, but if I didn't go after that majestic blue warframe with the energy claws then she would most likely end up as part of a Zanuka Proxy.

The scan I had taken had confirmed it; the proxies we fought had in fact contained warframe components and technology. There were currently no theories on what happened to the Tenno who had been used to make the proxy when the proxy was killed. Did they reform as a Tenno somewhere else? Did they just vanish into the void? Or did they retain consciousness through their components while the proxies decomposed? None of those were particularly preferable…

On the other hand, my brother was obviously in trouble and had gone to great lengths to amass the coordinates of almost 1000 data vaults… and since I could not contact him it was entirely possible I might not see him again for quite some time. If I missed the data rotations, then I would go mad from the curiosity before I saw him again!

Still, I had a duty to my 'sister'. I may not actually be a Tenno, but that didn't mean I shouldn't live by the Tenno code of honor…

I quickly messaged Loki, asking if he had found anything yet. The reply was a brief one; "No."

Well, I could wait around doing nothing… or I could start hunting data vaults myself – perhaps I'd even find the data on the Zanuka Project's headquarters.

I entered the first set of coordinates and watched the world turn to a blur.

* * *

As it happened, spying was not much different to rescuing. I had to use most of the same skills, the difference being that I had to do it three times and then I could just run for the evacuation rather than having to haul a hostage with me safely. Only one vault per area contained the data I was targeting but I stole the contents of all of the vaults in order to justify keeping the data from one – and to disguise my true purpose from the Lotus, who was undoubtedly watching. I had ordered Ordis to stream the data from the vaults we were targeting to my ship data-banks instead of the Lotus. She probably wouldn't be too happy, but if what my brother said was true… that was assuming he was actually my brother – he seemed genuine, but anyone could be a good liar, and I couldn't see his face or his mind.

* * *

Beta was grumbling throughout the entire mission, until we found a kubrow den. That was when the inside of my head exploded with jubilant cries of "Oh look at the little widdle puppy" and suchlike. Had the aforementioned 'puppy' not been about 2 meters long and armed with a set of razor sharp teeth and a strong desire to decorate them with my blood; I might've found it cute too…

As was, I had to shoot it several times just to make it let go, and then several more times to finally kill it. The kubrow apparently had thick leathery skin that was basically natural bio-armor… I was not very keen on them, and quite surprised that the psychotic lunatic had a soft spot for them. I had heard Isaac talking about getting one –as it seemed it was traditional for Tenno to have a faithful companion – but I had yet to see any that weren't feral.

I decided to carry out one more mission, and then another, and another. I barely even noticed the passage of time until I realized that it was getting dark in this sector of Earth. I had almost forgotten that they had a day/night cycle that occurred every standard rotation. Sun in the day and moon in the night, which meant I should be able to see the moon... I couldn't. A clear sky and no visible moon? Irrelevant, I had a mission and was running an absurd amount of spy missions. Cephalon Cordylon was probably going to love me and hate me at the same time for this. I was now approaching the 52nd targeted data vault… Sheesh, that was a lot.

* * *

Time blurred as I murdered and stole my way through vault after vault after vault… My Excalibur warframe was beginning to get stained with blood and so it now looked like my lower half was actually painted red. During the night this was not a problem, but there were many more vaults that were situated on planets that didn't currently have a night cycle… I was going to have to get it cleaned. Ugh…

I had finally cleared the last targeted data vault on Earth, my warframe was literally stained red and dark brown from all of the blood and oil I had practically waded through to get this done. I still felt no physical fatigue, but mentally I could feel myself tiring. I needed to meditate. I stepped into the airlock of my Liset and practically dropped into the interior as the ship blasted out of the atmosphere. I lay down on the foundry and ordered Ordis to clean my warframe so that I could go out looking presentable after my meditation. But just as I was about to drop into the gentle embrace of the trance I heard a voice:

"Alpha, Beta? I've found a lead on the Zanuka Project from the data you've recovered."

"Ordis, stop the cleaning process. I can't hear myself think!" I call telepathically to the irritating cehpalon.

"What?" I reply to the Lotus blearily, forcing myself back out of semi-awareness as the cacophony fades.

"The grineer vaults you sent me the data from, there is some surveillance data on the zanuka project and a little bit of intel on the project's founder; a man by the name of Alad V."

"Do you have the location of the headquarters?!" I half demand telepathically.

"No. I only have some coordinates and a few scraps of data. But your efforts have been noted. Get some rest because I may need to deploy all four of you at short notice, I won't lose a single Tenno if I can do anything about it!" She sounds almost passionate.

"I understand" With that I lay down again and entered meditation.

* * *

I was awakened by Ordis informing me that Loki was trying to hail me telepathically and he sounded 'very excited'. I stood up and stretched, feeling much more refreshed, before noticing that I was still stained with blood. I had forgotten to command Ordis to resume the cleaning process after I finished talking to the Lotus. I considered yelling at him, but decided to save my temper for this Alad V person… he deserved it.

I approached the navigation console and opened a channel to Loki who, as Ordis had said, was excitedly telling the others about the data he'd found. He hadn't found the location of the Zanuka Project's facilities, he'd done better. Alad V had taken a personal interest in the captured warframe and had had it taken to one of his citadels for his personal inspection – that didn't sound good. The good news was that the data on his citadel was barely hidden at all because, like with most Corpus cities, it was a colossal trading hub as well as a manufacturing and training complex. Which meant that it was fairly easy to locate it and with a bit of meddling acquire some of the schematics. It also meant that it was a prime target for enemies of the Corpus…

"Lotus?" I queried as I opened a channel to her conscious

"Yes Alpha?"

"Alad V's citadel will be quite well protected, will it not?"

"Yes… is that a problem?"

"Not in and of itself, but if he were to learn of our arrival could he potentially relocate the captured tenno?"

"He has the means to yes, but there's nothing we can do about that."

"What if we could… do something?"

"IF there were anything we could do I would authorize it, but since there is not…"

"So I have your permission to act?"

"That depends on what you intend to do. Would you care to enlighten me?"

"It's a surprise."

"Alpha, tell me."

"Lotus, could you just trust me on this one? I don't think you'll like it, but it will make our jobs a lot easier and drastically increase our chances of success…"

"Alpha…"

"Please? Just this once?

I can almost hear the buzzing of the Lotus' mind as she tried to figure out my intentions. After a significant pause she replies:

"Very well then, if it will in fact increase your chances of success."

"Thank you Lotus." I add in a more respectful tone. I understand how difficult it would be for me to trust a soldier with a general's job if I were in her place.

* * *

Several hours later all four of our ships are in orbit around the Themisto sector, moving just beyond the range of its sensory network. I haven't told anyone what I did, and I am somewhat curious to see how it goes down… The Lotus will probably disapprove, but will eventually see the twisted logic behind it. The others… they might not for quite some time.

"Alpha, what are we waiting for?" comes Antonio's impatient question over the shared channel.

"Patience, it's almost ready. Do you have the plans?"

"We do." Comes the chorus of impatient voices. "Although… what exactly is the 'distraction' marked on here? How do you intend to cause such a massive distraction from here anyway? And how would that stop the Corpus from moving the Valkyr?" Isaac sounds understandably dubious, but before I have to explain I see them. Just on time.

The twelve Grineer galleons come into range of all of our sensors almost simultaneously, and seconds later the Corpus' sensors pick them up as well. That's when the panic starts.

As we watch the galleons spread out and begin to encircle the citadel, blasting apart a few insignificant trade ships as they do. That's when the main force arrives. Having waited for the vanguard to clear the skies of any immediate threats the main force now punches into the atmosphere, the sky is suddenly filled with the sinister dark green ships, each easily two or three kilometers long and bristling with weapons. From my viewport I can see boarding craft and Ogmas flying in formation as the city below panics.

"Let's move" I say triumphantly into the channel "the Grineer have orders not to fire on us, and for now we will not fire on them. We have two objectives; Rescue the Valkyr and kill Alad V. No more and no less. If we are lucky then both will be close together."

"Understood" comes the half-amused agreement from the other three – perhaps they will adjust to this idea faster than I thought…

"You do realise the Lotus is going to kill you for this, don't you?" quips Antonio as our Lisets turn in unison and speed towards the citadel's landing pads.

* * *

Even as we land, I can see it has worked. Grineer boarding pods are impacting all over the citadel, fires are already beginning to spread and the Corpus security is being slaughtered before they can organize any meaningful resistance. We don't even slow down, simply running through the burning and fractured corridors towards the objective. Occasionally a crewman will sprint across at a junction ahead of us – running towards the other side of the citadel that is currently being assaulted by literally millions of the clone soldiers – but we pay them no heed. We have our mission, and all of us are quite keen on increasing the number of active Tenno. If that means starting a war early, so be it.

I had talked to General Ruk in great length about why he wanted this sector so badly, on a planet controlled by his enemy. In essence, what he wanted was a beachhead to allow him to stage a full planetary assault, it was as much for morale as for tactical benefit. In theory, most Grineer ships could perform a full orbit of the gas giant in only a few hours, but in practice it was much easier to fly through the atmosphere since the enormous gas clouds rendered long range sensors useless – excellent for pillaging unsuspecting trade ships and small Corpus cities, and for getting a large force close to a target and striking before they could react. Also brilliant for morale. It was also quite interesting how readily he had agreed to work alongside the Tenno on this venture, sure he wouldn't want to work against the Tenno. But I had made it quite clear that we would be focusing on our own objectives rather than assisting the invasion, and while we might lend a hand afterwards he should not expect any assistance on the citadel. I suspected that this too, was for morale of the troops. Knowing that the most dangerous entities in the known universe were allied with you had a tendency to encourage people, even if they weren't strictly allied so much as loosely neutral…

I had made note somewhat earlier that there had been some sort of disagreement between General Sargus Ruk and Alad V over something else on Mars, something in the Gravidus sector. For now, it wasn't my problem, but if I could start a war on Jupiter rather than Mars, not only would less civilians be at risk but I could also potentially dart in and take a look at what was happening in the Gravidus sector while the two factions massacred each other here.

The Grineer had numbers, and the Corpus had technology – this meant that any conflict would inevitably take time. When you factored in the Grineer attitude of "Send them in, we have more soldiers anyway" and the Corpus attitude of "Clean everything up, there mustn't be a single survivor hiding anywhere" you only accentuated the time of conflict. The Grineer had enough troops to hit every city in the atmosphere simultaneously if they so wished, but the Corpus only had a few specialized 'hunter teams' with deep gene scanning devices to allow them to hunt stray enemy soldiers (who all had the same genetic structure due to being clones). That meant that the Corpus would not undertake any form of counter offensive until every city had been checked and cleared, which would take a long time. This would give the Grineer time to recover, and then when the Corpus inevitably counter attacked there would be a repeat of the situation elsewhere. The Grineer would swarm everything, and then the Corpus would check everything – captured outposts, their own cities, civilian areas and basically everything – for Grineer survivors before attacking again. Assuming they won. If they lost, the Grineer would blockade an area and build it up while waiting for more reinforcements to arrive from around the system meaning there would be a stalemate in which The Company was losing profits. A sure way to provoke a counter attack. If the Grineer could successfully fortify an area and receive reinforcement they would push on into Corpus territory, not relenting until they had captured their objective or lost too many troops to hold the current fortifications.

The war between the two factions had been about to start anyway, due to the disagreement over this mess on Mars… I had simply accelerated the process and directed it to the least populated area with the most potential benefit. The Lotus probably would still give me an earfull for this though…

* * *

We were now approaching the target area of the citadel, which was deeper within the city on a low hanging section, that meant lots of windows and lots of defense turrets. Thankfully no-one was creative enough to order them to target the four running Tenno who were, for some parts of the run, painfully exposed to enemy fire. It had always fascinated me how some people built downwards as well as upwards, in my mind you had a base and you built up from that, getting narrower near the top. In actual fact many cultures had found that you could build down from the 'base' as well. The Corpus were another example of this, as the whole of this section of the city seemed to be hanging – which bearing in mind that the city was effectively hovering due to some very large engines – gave the impression that these sections could fall off at any time.

This didn't seem to bother the others though, so we ran on. We were now beginning to encounter some residual security who had not moved to help defend – probably because of what this area contained. They didn't survive long enough to even cry out. This part of the city dealt with 'Orokin Recycling' which consisted of stealing artifacts from the first empire and attempting to reverse engineer them to help The Company. The Corpus cult worshiped profit and Orokin technology, to have Orokin technology around massively increased morale because the soldiers could see that the legends were true and were being used to hep them in combat. This led to an interesting sight, as every now and then we would pass a room with a prime weapon or something hanging suspended in an anti-gravity field and surrounded by prayer mats. I was half tempted to pop in and pick up another weapon, but that would have to wait till the way back. I still had my Vectis Prime and that would be plenty enough for now… The others had no prime weapons though, and I could see them getting distracted by the research labs containing the assorted primes.

Finally, we were at our destination; Lab 72. The door was fairly plain on the outside, but as soon as we passed through it – slowing as we did so – we saw how mistaken we'd been. The inside of the door was reinforced with the finest Orokin alloy, as were the walls and there were no windows. We had all slowed to a walk now, uneasily gripping our favoured weapons... there was something about this place… and it made us all uneasy.

I led the way, silently to the nearest door and, after a second, punched it in with one swift strike. The reinforcement on the inside acted against it. The pattern of bars was designed to stop things getting out, any force applied to the door from the inside would brace the bars against safe-holds in the walls and ceiling, effectively sealing the door to any force less than a missile impact. From the outside though, this made the door surprisingly vulnerable, meaning that I struck it much harder than I needed to and overbalanced – almost falling into the room. I immediately stepped back, attempting to regain my balance, as the others rushed in around me with their weapons raised. It had been four days since the blue Valkyr had been captured, we had been recovering for almost two days – except Loki who had visited every Corpus data vault he could find in an attempt to find the information on her whereabouts. Then I had spent the best part of a day hunting data vaults myself, and another 20 something hours meditating to recover from the intense activity. I personally did not have high hopes for the Valkyr's survival, but it was our duty to locate her warframe so that if she could not reform on her own then she could be taken to a machine which could force her to reform – albeit very painfully. Being 'dead' had strange effects on Tenno, few of them positive, but it was a fairly temporary state of affairs. From what I'd heard from Isaac it was also a very unpleasant state of affairs because you were stuck in a sort of limbo, The Orokin had designed the warframes to preserve the Tenno within and when they died the warframes effectively trapped the essence of the user, allowing them to be resuscitated with void energy. Unfortunately, that meant that the Tenno's conscious was trapped for a potentially infinite time in an immobile body, at least until it was rescued or built up sufficient void energy for a revive.

As it happened; I was wrong.

We were walking into the room, which was dark for some reason or other, when I heard something. It was a whimper, and it immediately reminded me of a wounded kubrow, but somewhere distant. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and continued into the shadowy lab…

The whimper came again; it wasn't so kubrow-like after all… but then what was it? It sounded muffled, like it was an animal with a bite harness… A kavat perhaps?

Finally, my warframe's inbuilt computer decided it couldn't see well enough anymore and turned on my helmet torches. And None of us liked what the torches illuminated;

The table in front of us looked like something from a medieval torture chamber, sure it had energy constraints and advanced technology, but it was brutally primitive nonetheless… And that's when we noticed, it wasn't actually red. That was blood, lots of it. Ghastly.

I was about to turn away when the blood moved. An odd shaped object raised itself a little, and then slumped back into the red ooze. I immediately strode over to it, even as the others called to me to stop. Whatever it was, it had been trapped here, and by the look of things it had also been tortured. If I released it, it could help us fight the Corpus, perhaps it could even tell us where the Valkyr was…

It raised its head again, now I could see that actually it wasn't a pool of blood so much as a level of blood that was almost covering something beneath, something human looking – probably female!

If this was a human, then the poor thing had probably broken beyond all hope of repair. Humans after all, could easily be broken both psychologically and physically… and bearing in mind the pitiful whimpers this one was making it was likely that it had suffered both. I raised my heat sword to its throat, ready to slice it and end the poor thing's suffering – assuming that this would somehow kill it despite the it having survived the colossal blood loss – when I heard it.

"Do it" the telepathic whisper was barely audible, even with my senses on high alert. But it was enough for me to flinch back; this was no human! This was a Tenno!

After only a second of shocked hesitation, I whirled the blade down and cut through the torture table's power supply. The shower of sparks barely even registered as I raised my hand and the healing nanites poured out over the wounded Tenno. This was the Valkyr, I was certain of it!

I heard a sigh of relief followed come from the Tenno, and then a soft moan of some sort. It was not a happy moan, but it was a life sign none the less. Loki found the lights, but Isaac had beckoned for him not to turn them on just yet – they could easily daze both myself and the Valkyr who were in the darker part of the room. And the last thing we needed was for two Tenno to be dazed should an assault team come in to check why the room was being damaged.

That's when we heard them; footsteps! Great...

I finished healing the Valkyr and then gently pushed her back down, and manually turning off my helmet torch I slid into the shadows, as the other three had already done. A Corpus executive entered the room, and looked around. He, like many of his peers, was adorned with strange linear tattoos on his face. In this case he had two lines coming down his cheeks from below his eyes, almost like construction lines – which is probably what they were intended to resemble – and was wearing some sort of collar. He was accompanied by only one proxy, a four legged Zanuka variant like the ones we had encountered four days previously. This one was a sort of blue-green in colour and looked slightly different, but it was obvious that it had warframe components too. They would both have to die.

We waited for them to step further into the room, but just as I was about to signal for the others to strike; things went wrong.

The now-free Valkyr sprung from the table showering the room with blood, and tackled the executive to the floor, drawing her energy claws and viciously assaulting his shielding. We immediately focused on the proxy, knowing how much trouble they could be. I fired two shots in rapid succession – expecting to remove a limb, but it barely even made a mark on the proxy's shield! All four of us focused our fire on the head, to absolutely no avail! I threw an energy restore to the Valkyr without taking my eye off the Zanuka.

The proxy, hesitated for a moment, torn between helping its master or attacking us and that moment was enough. Isaac swung his Galatine at the Zanuka's head, which was apparently the best way to kill them as he'd found out last time before being riddled with plasma.

It bounced off! The shielding barely noticed the damage, and then the proxy turned to me. I drew my exalted blade and in a single dash I crossed the room, leaving the floor in molten tatters as energy wave after energy wave collided with the Zanuka. I knocked it back, but my efforts did no harm either. It was about to open fire on me when the executive screamed. The proxy immediately abandoned me and leapt to his aid, barging into the enraged Valkyr – who was still losing a lot of blood – and knocking her off while simultaneously giving off a cloud of healing nanites. That's when Antonio shot it.

The arc of the synapse would normally have done less damage than either of our attacks, but somehow the arc caught the nanites. The ensuing spitting explosion filled the air with smoke and began to melt the floor before it stopped. The proxy collapsed, punctuating the abrupt silence as we all considered the healing nanites within our own arms… and how dangerous they could be. Everyone stared at the collapsed proxy, then at Antonio, then back at the proxy and the executive who was rising to his feet alongside it with a shocked expression on his face. Then the Valkyr pounced on him and he descended in the midst of a cloud of his own flying blood and her screams of rage.

We stared, it wasn't polite, but having never actually seen anything recover so fast – not even when using healing nanites – we were amazed at the rate with which the Valkyr healed her own wounds by inflicting them on others. Bearing in mind that 'others' in this case referred to the Corpus executive with the surprisingly durable proxy, no-one minded.

After almost a minute of intense slashing and screaming – vocal screaming that is – the Valkyr finally calmed down... a bit. She stepped back from the bloody mess on the floor that used to be the Corpus executive, and strode towards us. I saw Antonio back away, but I held my ground. She remembered us, right?

She stopped in front of me, still dripping blood, and bowed.

"Thank you, brother" she sounded much calmer, an abrupt change from the screaming frenzy she had been barely seconds ago. It was unnerving…

"You're welcome." I stammered, "I am sorry we could not get here earlier…"

"It is no problem. Alad V is dead, and I am free. Do you have any other objectives or can we go?" she's speaking very formally, which is making me more worried. Is she annoyed at us? Or is this just how she normally is? Does she not trust us, or not respect us for our earlier failure?

"Alad V is dead?"

"Yes. That executive was him. He is no more"

"That is good news, I was worried that we would have to fight more invincible proxies…" interjects Antonio.

"You will not. That was the only one with such shielding. It was his pet." I can hear the anger returning to her voice, and it is disconcerting to say the least.

"How do you know?" Isaac asks.

"Simple. That one has my components. He has only captured one Valkyr, and he used my parts to make… that."

That's when it finally sinks in; not only is it's 'skin' the same colour it also has the same ability! When she got energy she became almost invincible last time as well. Perhaps that's what this proxy was using as well… If that technology got into mass production…

"We should destroy it." I say "If the Corpus have even the slightest chance of recovering that technology they will become unstoppable!" It occurs to me that she might want to try and recover her components, but now is not the time. There's an invasion going on, and we are in the headquarters of the Zanuka project. The likelihood of us not having been noticed after all the screaming and gunfire is very low.

"I agree." She says, much to my surprise. And with that said, she turns and draws her energy claws, picking up the whole proxy with surprising ease. This time she runs her claws over the chassis millimeter by millimeter, slowly melting the whole proxy into a puddle of molten metal that drips down her leg and onto the floor. After almost a minute she reaches the point where she's only holding two feet, which she puts on the table and proceeds to melt away as well. Then she turns to me and says;

"Lead the way. We should leave"

She seems impressively calm, bearing in mind that she just melted her only chance of regaining her previous appearance rather than this rugged looking underskin, which had to have been quite taxing…

We turn and, as a group, head towards the labs. There is no hurry to get to extraction, and Valkyr needs weapons, and everyone else is lusting after those primes as well… there is some pillaging to do. After all, it is 'for the Lotus' because it inconveniences our enemies, so there's no harm in it, right?

The prime weapons seem to cheer her up, especially once she finds a pair of Venka Prime, and slots them onto her wrists. The entire team moves as one, emptying each lab in turn of its weapons. Some we will use, but most we will save for other Tenno who join us in future. It's better that the Grineer don't get their hands on too many… so we walk to extraction carrying, dragging and kicking ahead of us a disproportionately large number of gilded golden weapons along the silent corridors.

Once we've loaded the first batch onto our ships, we return for a second batch, and then a third. The fighting is still intense on the other side of the citadel and occasionally a stray shell or missile impacts on something important looking near us, but we are sheltered from any debris by being on the underside of the city. We eventually put all of the prime weapons into the ships - agreeing to share them equally once we get out of here - and leave, heading off at a slow pace, before turning the ships around to watch as the Grineer forces finally rout the Corpus resistance and pursue them to the edge of the furthest point of the city. There they dig in, as a galleon rounds the corner and the surviving Corpus disappear in a cloud of blood and burning debris as it opens fire…

A good day all in all. A friend gained and an enemy lost. Now just to hope that Valkyr is actually coping as well as she seems to be, which is unlikely. She's resting in the back of my ship, as she has no Liset, and at some point I will have to talk to her about such things… but for now I just watch as the Corpus are eliminated, and the sun sets over a city of greed. The sun will be gone in a few minutes, due to the speed of Jupiter's orbit, but that doesn't bother me. For now; it is beautiful, and that is all I ask of it. Life is good.

* * *

The Grineer team smashed into the room with the kind of vigor possessed only by a group of hyperactive sociopaths out to cause trouble, but finding nothing of interest they were about to leave when one of them noticed something. He beckoned to his teammates, grunting "Look ovargh dere." The Team moved towards the object. It was a collar of some sort, covered in blood, credits and what appeared to be the pieces of an intestine... It was currently reforming.

Knowing little of such things one of the lancers kicked it once or twice, and receiving no response proceeded to lead the team out of the room to where he thought something more breakable would be found. None of the marines heard the weak chuckle that emanated from the collar, and none of them saw the soft golden glow on its base as a conscious was resuscitated using the unnaturally high residual void energy that was found in all of Alad V's citadels...

 **End of Chapter 11**

 **Author's note:**

 **I have always wondered what exactly triggered the Corpus-Grineer war, because while the lore mostly attributes it to the Gravidus Dilemma there was conflict before that and there were other causes. I like to think that, like many actual wars it would have begun due to diplomacy breaking down and then a chain of progressively worsening events that ended in the Gravidus Dilemma, which would have been the final straw rather than the first sign of disagreement.**

 **As always, I would appreciate any feedback on the writing and the content. I am still looking to improve.**

 **And for those of you who are worried: this is not the end of the story, in fact, this is only the beginning. It gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view) from here on in.**

 **I will also be trying to explore Valkyr's mental state a little more, but not being an expert in such things I will ask for forgiveness in advance for any inaccuracies – of which there will likely be a few.**


	12. Hunting

The Lotus, the great deceiver… she fooled all of the Tenno for so long… I had only discovered her intentions by accident, but when I did it was clear she was already poised to strike. I can only imagine the devastation that strike would have caused had I not interfered… but I am glad I did. I lost a lot, but in the end I would do it all again to save my brethren, IF my true brother cannot be saved then I must save what I can…

* * *

 **Chapter 12: Hunting**

Everything had been going according to plan; the Corpus were falling back, their production facilities occupied by the Grineer and put to… better use… Their cities burned in flames, their soldiers died in their millions. Jupiter was going to fall, and there was nothing The Company could do about it. The seemingly endless waves of Grineer ships piled into the atmosphere day and night and there was nothing to stop them. A battle was raging in orbit, but the Corpus' ships were mostly for trading and troop transport, they were no match for the Grineer who had fleets designed specifically for combat… and that much was clear, even as I stood on the spire I saw another Corpus cruiser plummet through the atmosphere belching smoke and debris as it began to burn from re-entry. It was a beautiful sight really, and yet, something felt wrong.

Things were nagging at the back of my mind… An image of a young child, crying because I had not promised to spare his father – how could I? A long list of coordinates that were going to be useless in a few weeks… a crazy brother who lurked in the shadows, striking only to kill… and most importantly; the broken sobbing wreck who lurked in the city below. All of them needed to be dealt with in some way.

The torture the Corpus had inflicted on Valkyr had caused her serious psychological damage. And that was the thing about Tenno; physically they were invincible, but mentally they could only be so strong… sure they had psychic defenses, but that didn't help much with physical and psychological torture. If they had tried to break her using psychic attacks or brainwashing, they would have protected her… but they chose physical torture instead… and everyone breaks eventually when exposed to physical torture…

Valkyr had had a traumatic awakening – her systems had registered the disassembled proxies as Tenno in origin – as brothers and sisters, all dead - then she had been rescued by Loki, only to see him gunned down… and then she had endured 4 days of incessant torture as hope after hope was turned to ash…

I had to find Valkyr… again. We had discovered that she had a fair bit of pent up anger… and that the best way for her to release it seemed to be to massacre anything corpus in origin… preferably things that screamed. She seemed to alternate between perfect calm, burning rage and sobbing emotional wreck in seconds. I had no emotion, so I could not understand this… I tried to help, but I could not deal with the root of the problem so she would remain as she was for the time being. Problem was she did not trust the others. She trusted me, perhaps because I had not killed her despite her asking me to (It wouldn't have been permanent, but it was still a big deal), or perhaps because she saw me as the trusted leader… but for whatever reason she did not trust the others. And since she was not the most communicative it was hard to solve that dilemma as well…

She had snuck off in her own ship – a mantis she got from the Lotus – and gone to slaughter Corpus for therapy… as you do… the problem was a fit of rage was typically followed by an absolute breakdown. Which means that she is currently somewhere on the city covered in blood and probably crying… and I am the only one she trusts enough to calm her down. I'm not sure I like that sort of responsibility…

I step off the spire and drop.

The fall is beautiful, I can feel the air rushing past through my warframe and the beautiful sunset is in progress – this is the fourth day of the invasion and it shows... I look up and see a Grineer ship ram into a corpus frigate reducing it to a shower of high velocity shrapnel even as the sky is filled with a missile barrage from another, larger, Corpus ship. The smoke trails paint the already beautiful horizon gray temporarily, before an air current disperses them leaving only the faintest of sunset-red rimmed wisps as evidence - and the explosions. They're quite decisive evidence.

I land in a crouch, narrowly missing a river of blood that is flowing down onto a lower platform. It seems the city is slightly off balance… probably from the bombardment. Regardless, it makes my job easier as the only realistic cause for that much blood was Valkyr… so I only have to follow the stream of blood that trickles viscously under doors, and hope she recognizes me before she tries to kill me. I had learnt to make my presence known when attempting to find her the first time. Being pounced on by a screaming ball of clawed fury does not rank high on my list of positive experiences… at all.

I proceed without any trouble, there isn't anything intact enough to put up a fight… although it looks like the recycling systems are down on this city as well. The Grineer have been shooting out the recycling systems in a bid to scavenge as many corpus energy weapons as possible for their own research – since there is now a war the urgent need to develop energy weapons of their own has become even more pressing. It doesn't matter who clears the city, someone will collect the unrecycled weapons later and get a big fat promotion… I haven't found any bodies yet, but sometimes there isn't enough left to find after Valkyr has lost her temper.

Finally, the Lotus tells me I'm close, so I begin calling out on all Tenno telepathic frequencies… no response… this is getting repetitive…

I go through the next door very slowly to avoid alarming her, if she is in there… I look around, and then begin to check every shadow or dark place I can find. For some reason people seek out gloomy places to be miserable in… also something I don't understand – not that I want to.

Sure enough, she's hiding in one of the smaller rooms. I could tell because the lighting fixtures have been ripped off the ceiling and clawed and stamped into little fragments… and there are bodies. Lots of them. And pieces of them, that bit looks suspiciously like a leg… that is not attached to anything, nor has it been cleanly cut. It looks like it has been ripped off… This seems like one of her worse episodes…

I enter the darkened room even slower than the other one, cautiously holding my hands out – emptily – in my vague attempt at a placating gesture. I'm not very good at calming people down normally, what with having been designed as a killing machine and all, but Valkyr is easy: you just hug her and don't let go. Either she'll remove your arm – like she did to Isaac, who is still recovering – or she will calm down… I REALLY hope she calms down...

Sure enough, in the corner of the room between two piles of mangled cadavers is Valkyr… curled up in a foetal position hugging her knees, and sobbing quietly… I'm not sure if she's noticed me, so I make my presence known by tapping on the wall. She looks up, but doesn't move. That seems like a good sign… I think…

I approach her slowly and gently wrap my arms around her trembling blood-soaked frame… offering about as much comfort as I can, and as is routine she slowly relaxes into my arms. We stay like that for a good fifteen minutes before she breaks the reverie.

"Sorry Alpha… I didn't mean to inconvenience you…" she sounds slightly sheepish; she regrets the outburst.

"Don't worry about it, I understand." It seems that pitying her tends to lead towards dismemberment, but fortunately I'm not very good at pity, so I just attempt to reassure her in my own way instead… which coincidentally is much less painful than pitying her, but that's just an added bonus.

"Can we go back now?" she queries as she raises her head to look at me. Which is odd because Tenno view the word from behind their heads, so she was able to see me perfectly well the whole time. Not relevant, I remind myself.

"Yea, we should really…" I'm careful to keep my telepathic voice soft, in a sort of not-quite comforting way.

"Let's go then" And just like that, she's back to calm… I decide not to ask what set her off this time, the last thing I want to do is upset her again.

We walk to the nearest landing pad in silence, mutually reassuring each other. I wonder briefly what is going through her head… probably tactical stuff now that she's calm. She is a brilliant tactician when she is collected, the problem is that that is barely half the time. I think we now desperately need to find some sort of tenno psychiatrist or psychologist – both for my cognitive fissure and for her…

* * *

We're back on the relay relaxing, as the others have just got back from a mission for the Grineer when the Lotus – in a very unprofessional manner – connects to our telepathic channels while still swearing… much to Antonio's amusement. Unfortunately, the smiles are wiped off our faces by her next announcement.

"Tenno. We have a crisis: Alad V is alive, and has released the infestation on Jupiter!"

We remain in stunned silence only for a few seconds before we all try to speak at once…

"How did he survive?!"

"Does that mean the Grineer will be driven back?!"

"What are the infestation's targets?!"

"Do we have a mission?!"

But we all stop when we hear Valkyr's question: "Did you say Alad V is alive?" It's not the question, it's not even the implications. The thing that makes us stop in our tracks is the cold hard rage that emanates from her mind across the telepathic channel… even the Lotus recoils.

Silence…

We all know what this means for her… probably another breakdown and murderous rampage… perhaps we should try and get her off the relay… can we even get her off the relay? I'm ready to send out the evacuation signal… but I doubt that will be enough.

I start towards her to try and calm her in the only way I know, but she holds up a hand indicating to me to stop.

"Alpha, don't"

I have no suitable response… I had expected her to sprint for her ship and set out to hunt Alad down the instant the information registered… Instead she is calm, sure a metaphorical storm is brewing, but this is the calm before the storm. The time when she will be thinking most clearly, and most unemotionally… unsurprisingly though, no civilization managed to get far with researching this state of mind, so I can only guess what effects it has on her mind because science doesn't know.

"Lotus, do you know where he is? We should eliminate the problem at its source." Loki seems to have made himself scarce I realise as she speaks… He isn't a combat type, if she snaps he'll be the first casualty. I think I can see the shimmer of Loki's invisibility on the top of the larger door frame... He does realise she can get up there too, doesn't he?

"I don't, but it shouldn't be too hard to find him. There is a fleet of infested Corpus ships approaching Jupiter. I think he intends to ram the Grineer command cruisers and infect them from there… he must be stopped." The Lotus interrupts my train of thought, I had forgotten she was still there.

"He must be stopped…" echoes Valkyr…

 **End of Chapter 12**


	13. The Ship

I used to think that the Lotus was just illogical, merely a wise human who had her flaws. Now I know otherwise. It was logical throughout – but its emotions clouded its mind. Why 'she' willingly chose to suffer those things I do not know…

* * *

 **Chapter 13: The Ship**

The Lisets blur through space seeking their target, seconds later the bulkier mantis drops into formation above us and we all accelerate in unison. I am so glad that the cephalons are piloting our ships for us because at the rate we're travelling I wouldn't be able to detect – not to mention avoid – an asteroid if one were to come at us. As it just so happens we're close enough to Jupiter for asteroids not to be a problem...

The Lotus has warned General Ruk of the developments and it is becoming clear that he has taken action. The blockade around Jupiter is still present, but rather than existing in one solid spherical blockade it is now a set of multiple staggered rings with the larger vessels positioned at key points – gravity nodes, orbiting asteroids, shipping lanes and the blasted shells of space structures are now all decorated by Grineer Galleons. It is quite smart; if any one ship is infested then the other ships can back away to a safe firing distance and blast it out of existence within minutes of contamination. While the spores will travel through space even after such an ordeal, Ruk is organizing a sort of impromptu decontamination route. Several ships have been anchored and one or more of their main engines removed to form a tunnel of engines all pointing inwards. Since this structure of welded and riveted engines is fairly high up in the atmosphere any ship can reach it within minutes and pass through to cleanse itself of any spores. Unfortunately, there is no specific way of dealing with the infestation as of yet because it was only recently released but the Grineer have discovered that the infestation as a whole will actually try to escape from flames since fire seems to be especially damaging to their unique type of flesh. Which means a tunnel of inward facing afterburners _could_ actually work to remove infestation spores although it has yet to be tested.

Our targets however, do not seem deterred at all by the preparations for their arrival. If anything the approaching ships have sped up, the large Corpus armored super tanker that is leading the arrow-headed formation is looming closer and closer. That thing is huge…

In seconds it becomes even bigger as the distance between us decreases. Then the Lisets and Mantis simultaneously turn off the main engines and swivel with the maneuvering thrusters before magnetizing onto the hull in a neat line and proceeding to – through use of magnetic eddy currents – violently rip open gaps in the armor for us to enter through.

* * *

We all drop down from the tears in the hull into a corridor of the ship. The doors at either end of the corridor sealed it off as soon as the corridor was depressurized – standard safety procedure on any space vessel. We planned to override the emergency protocols within the mainframe of the ship to temporarily open the doors and then seal them afterwards therefore avoiding depressurization and any threat of serious cooling… shields and cold did not mix well. The plan was good, in fact it was almost ingenious, and it would have worked excellently as well were it not for the fact that Antonio had decided it was far too sensible…

The grenade launcher belched once, removing the entire door with the ensuing explosion and ripping it off its mountings towards us as the next room depressurized and locked down… great.

 _You know… it's not that bad an idea actually…_

"No-one asked you Beta…"

 _Maybe, but I thought I'd point out that since the infested cannot breathe without an atmosphere we literally can just walk to the reactor and destroy it without having to fight anything._

"Actually… I hadn't thought about it that way…"

 _You see? I am useful for more than just bossing the Grineer about._

"Make yourself more useful, tell me if there's any way the infested could cope with being unable to breathe. If it were this simple I'm sure someone would have done it by now…"

 _Nah, their only chance would be to grow some sort of air sac or a long breathing tube that could stretch back into a pressurized room – through a sealed blast door… Neither of those sounds very effective and they cannot adapt that fast… something like that would take them weeks..._

"So there's no way they could use some sort of mechanical aid? No air tanks or something?"

 _Dunno, I doubt it. The infestation is purely biological and they don't have anything resembling human mouths to fit into respirators or oxygen masks… as you can see by the amount of infested-guts that flies past after every room gets depressurised._

"If there is a God, remind me to thank him for that… the last thing we need is space-based infested! Can you imagine the chaos?"

 _Yea, it'd be beautiful. But do bear in mind that regardless of whether there is a God or not we won't ever meet him. Tenno are immortal and invincible. You'll have to send the message with someone we kill… preferably Alad…_

"I think I can manage that… actually… We'll have to do so before we let Valkyr near him…"

 _Simple enough to do that, isn't it?_

"You've been paying attention to coordinating everything while I had to calm her down… You have no idea… when she snaps it is not good – and it is NOT 'easy to restrain' her…"

 _A tenno should always have control of themselves. We're assassins, not berserkers._

"Were you even cognizant when we rescued her? Do you have any idea what she's been through!?"

 _No. I was organizing an invasion… can we do that again by the way?_ I'm not sure Beta could sound more disinterested if he tried… I'll have to have a word with him about it later… and maybe not introduce him to Valkyr until after that…

"Maybe… speaking of organizing invasions, aren't you supposed to be making yourself useful?"

 _Yea. Call me if you need help._

The Grenade launcher in Antonio's hands belched again – removing another door… He must have modified that thing a lot because we've gone through five rooms-worth of doors and he still isn't worried about ammunition… Or perhaps he's just Antonio and he just doesn't care?

* * *

As the sixth door is removed from its hinges – with three grenades, this one's tough for some reason -we're surprised to see that nothing comes out. No guts. We all move through it and look around, we're standing on an observation bridge part way up the inside of a massive tank – presumably for some sort of liquid. There are lights on the bridge but they are dim and point upwards… I look over the edge and stare into the inky darkness that obscures anything below us. Refusing to let the pang of unease get to me I turn on my helmet lights. What they illuminate is not encouraging…

The bridge is about 4/5 of the way up the inside of the tank… and everything below it is full of infested matter. It seems to be some sort of stringy grey flesh with red splotches… and its moving. Gross. Fortunately, that is inert infested flesh, it is not a living being. Which is good because since the tank must be about 5 kilometers in diameter and roughly cylindrical that would be a REALLY big infested life form. That's when I realized that the door had sealed somehow. I look at it and notice that there were safeguards – another emergency blast door. Not a problem. We'll deal with it on the way back if we need to and it gives me an excuse to stop Antonio from blowing off every door in this accursed hunk of an infested plague ship…

Then the lights flicker, and go out… not good…

" **Alpha** " comes the voice, more of a growl… " **You have committed crimes against the stability of the system and you must pay…** "

"Who's there?!" I ask, slightly more nervously than intended…

" **I am your doom, I am Justice, I… I am your end!** "

 _Bloody marvelous… and I thought we didn't have enough problems already…_

I'm about to ask Beta what he means when something nudges me to the left a little… which means that the energy-tipped arrow misses me by literally millimeters and instead skims Isaac – passing straight through his iron skin and drawing blood! Shit…

Almost immediately I surge forwards, who or what ever this is can use a bow and it has very nasty arrows… nothing can cut through Iron skin armour and a rhino warframe in one shot…

I leap over another arrow which zips towards my shin and yell a warning to the others to cover their eyes. I hope that hasn't given away my intentions to the intruder… I raise my heat sword and unleash a radial blind. The flash illuminates the whole of the tank. It bathes the whole 5km of thin bridge in harsh white light – and it does exactly as intended.

The intruder, some sort of black shadow covered figure, covers its face and screeches. It had been using night vision to deal with the darkness… and the burst of light from a radial blind is enough to blind people in daylight… through night vision he – because the shape is masculine and vaguely familiar – has likely had his eyes burnt out completely.

As I rush towards him I realise that the interloper is wearing something like a warframe… cloaked in a familiar black mist… Brother? What?!

Then it all floods back, before Valkyr we had that talk, he told me to 'kill' him if I got the chance because he could reform… I don't have time to debate whether I trust him or not, the others are watching me. I can't give the game away…

Without a second thought I blur towards him and slam the blade into his gut – all the way to the hilt. He grunts slightly, and then whispers "Well done, now kill me. Quickly before the others suspect."

I'm not sure why, but it actually hurts me as I twist the sword – still in his flesh – and wrench it upwards as I begin to channel energy into it to allow it to cut through his warframe-like thing. It's not that slicing him in half from guts upwards bothers me… it's not even the reassuring smile I see on the two halves of his face in my mind as he dissipates into black mist… it felt, strange. I had killed before, but until now it had always been mindless infested, or mindless clones, sometimes indoctrinated Corpus puppets… but killing a free thinking being… that felt really good! But somehow the victory felt hollow at the same time, he was my brother and I had just killed him… even if he would reform that was still a bit unnecessary, couldn't he just have avoided me?

"Well done Alpha," comes Isaac's praise from somewhere behind me on the bridge. "That was quite impressive… you certainly did better than I could, he got me the first time he came for me. Pesky bugger…"

"What was that?!" I ask, the shock in my voice is genuine, but not for the reason the others think it is.

"We don't know, Lotus thinks he's some sort of crazy rogue tenno… but he isn't very talkative about it when he attacks, so we don't know for sure." Isaac's voice still has a lot of admiration in it, probably not without reason either…

"Are you OK, Alpha?" comes Valkyr's softer voice – she too sounds thoroughly impressed… all I did was think quickly and then stab someone. It's not that big of a deal, even if that someone is actually a rogue tenno who was capable of taking down Isaac…

I'm about to answer when the lights flick back on, dazzling us momentarily before our vision is automatically adjusted. That's when I look back to the others and see it.

The MOA is standing behind them. It should be long gone. The infested growths all over its body suggest that it was in the process of being digested by the infestation… but then how is a dead MOA standing on a previously empty bridge? It wasn't there when I went past and it's not like there's anywhere to hide on the inspection bridge – being corpus in design it is basically a reinforced sheet of metal plates that connects one side of the tank to the other. It doesn't even have handrails… how did it get…

Then it moves. The MOA lurches forwards! Only by one step, but that's still a lot. The others see me standing motionless and turn to see why…

Antonio uneasily tightens his grip on the Penta grenade launcher as the half-digested MOA takes another shaky step towards us… then another… and then it falls flat on its face.

I start over towards it to investigate when it twitches and then begins to wriggle in an attempt to right itself. We watch the half dead MOA in fascination… robotics are always programmed with the necessary calculations for walking, but this one seems to be unable to walk? What on Earth is going on?

The MOA finally rights itself and then takes another step towards us. Progress… I guess…

Then it opens its eyes. The infested growth on the torso contains multiple glowing green eyes?! It's alive? That question is immediately answered as it bucks and launches three projectiles of some sort at us. We instinctively dodge all three but I end up a lot closer to the edge than intended. I happen to glance down, and regret it. The infested matter below us is changing, moving… the solid parts are pulling aside to let objects move up from below… the objects are pushing their way through the grey flesh, like zits as they burst… and then they do burst – releasing another of the same type of MOA… and another…

The first MOA raises its head and lets out a gargling call, and the others below reply. Then the ones below begin to leap up onto the bridge! The stumbling MOA must have just taught them how to walk through the hivemind! They must be adapted in some way, seeing as they're easily jumping the 20m gap between the bridge and the flesh below…

Finally, Valkyr comes to her senses and draws her energy claws and charges the newly arrived MOAs. "They're infested! Somehow the infestation is controlling the mechanical parts!"

We're broken out of our reverie as the set-upon MOAs scream as they're slashed and beaten by the raging female tenno… We once again raise our weapons, but there is absolutely no cover. The bridge is devoid of anything except a support column at the center – 2km away. The bridge erupts in flashes of light as we all fire our assorted weapons at everything that moves… MOA, infested flesh, pieces of MOA that are flying from the approximate direction of Valkyr who is now digging into a new horde of MOAs...

I had thought to bring a Braton Prime this time, expecting to have to deal with weaker hordes rather than tough individuals and it came in handy. Every time the muzzle flashed a MOA fell… but almost immediately another took its place. So I kept firing... The MOAs were firing their own cloud-like projectiles at us now… and that's when I realized something; the projectiles travelled like rockets… but they weren't exploding. They were hitting the bridge and dissolving it. The MOAs were firing nanites!

"Run!" I yell on all frequencies, "They're firing nanites, the bridge is going to get dissolved!"

The others take one look at the now half eaten bridge between us and the door, and then turn with me and run towards the center of the tank. Unfortunately, it's at that point that I remember that the infested are telepathic as well…

The projectiles of nanites suddenly stop aiming for us and begin hitting the bridge! I'm running at full sprint but the nanites are flying past us and hitting the bridge ahead of us. The infested hivemind is coordinating its attacks… not good.

 _Woah, you've managed to get yourself in quite some trouble..._ Beta whistles in my head.

"Unless you have useful advice, stop distracting me!" I growl back – the last thing I need is for Beta to be the cause of my death…

 _I actually don't, for once…_

"Then go away!"

That's when I have another eureka moment…

"Head for the column, but don't go past it!" I yell to the others, this time only on our channel – I'm not making that mistake again…

The others acknowledge with nods and hand gestures… and I think Valkyr was signing 'acknowledged' as well, but it's hard to tell because she's trying to sign it with a hand that has large orange energy claws and is halfway through a MOA… causing the whole MOA to bob in an odd manner, and then she focuses and tears it in half. Note to self: Don't annoy Valkyr…

We reach the circular platform that circumnavigates the central column, but is also attached to it. I Immediately spin around and draw my exalted blade and begin slashing at the swarms. The energy waves do exactly as I had hoped and ignite the nanites causing fairly sizable explosions, but causing them far away enough not to be a problem. We're safe. Or… we're as safe as any 4 beings onboard an infested Corpus supertanker filled with hostile infestation forms can be… (which is not very)

And then we get safer, because the bridge between us and the MOAs collapses with a painful shriek as the metal tears… and then a squelchy thump as half a kilometer of bridge lands in the moist grey flesh below…

The MOAs stand on the other part of the bridge and watch us, we stand and watch them. The only movement is the fluctuation of the energy around my blade and the blinking of hundreds of sets of six green eyes…

Standoff.

That's when we hear the infested shrieks from behind us… from the other side of the tank… coming across the still-intact other half of the bridge. Great…

"Valkyr, go back and cut the bridge will ya?" I ask in as light-hearted a tone as I can manage.

"Of course, both ends or do you just want it tilted so they can't get up"

"Just tilted." I tell her, even as she rounds the corner at speed…

Seconds later we hear the screams intensify as the infested realise what she's doing, and then the shrill whine of steel shearing under immense weight. Then there's a snap and more shrieking. Followed by a squishy thud…

Valkyr rounds the corner again, and shrugs her shoulders at me in an amused fashion. I'm not sure I want to ask…

"What happened?"

"I only cut the end of the bridge closest to us, but the infested were too far along and their weight has collapsed the bridge. Hope it wasn't important?"

"Fortunately, it wasn't… bloody abominations…"

The MOAs are still motionless except for blinking every now and then… it looks wrong to have multi-faceted eyes on a robot…

The fleshy floor below us is still squeezing out semi-translucent white capsules… but these are smaller… and they aren't bursting? Then they burst. We hear the whine of Osprey engines and instinctively look up to see where they are… I think all of us have at least once been shot from somewhere above by one of those things. There are no ospreys… odd.

The osprey is often described as the Corpus equivalent of the Grineer regulator. It isn't. Both are airborne machines, but that's one of the only similarities between them… The Corpus have access to much higher tech so their ospreys are fully mobile, better shielded and have a variety of functions – everything from shield projection, observation, scavenging, full on attack, mine laying and leeching off shields – in order to make them a vital part of the Corpus battlefield support arsenal. But they do not have stealth ospreys… all of them are fairly loud and quite brightly coloured, and yet I can't see any ospreys. I look down again to check on the pods… and figure out where the osprey engine sound is coming from… the smaller pods contained ospreys – which they are now 'hatching'. The problem is that these are infested ospreys, and they can still fly – although they seem to be currently in the process of learning to do so for the hivemind. Ospreys buzz in erratic patterns all over the place, bumping into each other and walls, zooming up to hit the ceiling, having their engines cut out and falling before sinking slightly into the soft floor. That stuff is gross…

Fortunately, the others are less fascinated and more interested in shooting… so the air is suddenly filled with a rain of lead, molten steel, grenades and plasma… I lift my exalted blade and join in. The ospreys fall to the ground in droves but unlike normal ospreys they no longer self-destruct when killed…

This of course riles up the MOAs, so I immediately have to redirect my energy waves to intercept the wall of nanite-swarms that they launch at us. Fortunately, none of the swarms gets close and so I'm able to, with one colossal swing, send a massive energy wave horizontally towards the MOAs. One or two of them manage to jump the wave, but the jumper's numbers are insignificant compared to the sheer volume that die from that one swing… on this bridge there is no cover, and that works to the advantage of the side with the best weapons – which is us.

I replace my exalted blade with the Braton Prime and pick off the last few as they land… and turn to see that the others are now finishing up with their infested osprey genocide. Good, now there's only one problem… how do we get to the other side of the tank?

Fortunately, I had done my research… Valkyr had an ability that formed a contained force field of magnetic energy – allowing the end of the tendril to latch onto things. This 'grappling hook' was strong enough to lift objects of around 50 tonnes before the power usage became too great and the force field collapsed. Fortunately, a tenno was barely 1 tonne… and Valkyr was easily strong enough to take the strain of ferrying us over. So I put the idea across to her, suggesting Loki go first… and then it occurred to me to question where exactly Loki was… again.

Fortunately, as it turned out, Loki was causing trouble elsewhere - having been locked out of the tank by the emergency door's abrupt sealing off of the area. And in traditional Loki fashion, he had just 'found himself' inexplicably in the command center… or what was left of it. Unfortunately for the infested Loki was not happy about having been locked out, and so had done some digging around. The only problem was that the infested had done a number on the command center – which meant Loki had succeeded in electrocuting himself multiple times before managing to achieve anything… and Loki did NOT like being electrocuted. At all.

As a result, it was hardly surprising when he announced that not only was he safe and alive, he had also sealed himself into the command center and had located an interesting display. The display was the ship's log, which also held the cargo manifest. The cargo manifest stated that the adjacent tank was filled with Hydrogen Chloride gas… and he was feeling very malicious towards the infestation…

I didn't even think I just told him to be ready to release it into our tank. Because I knew my chemistry, and Hydrogen Chloride gas (HCl) was used in the production of hydrochloric acid, and the way to do that was to expose the gas to humidity. Humidity like, for example, several kilometers of moist infested flesh just like the stuff below us…

I convey the instructions to the others, and as Antonio – who decided he would go first due to being able to quickly whittle down the crowd of infested that eagerly awaited our next move with a couple of electric discharges. I consented and as he hugs Valkyr I pray that he won't make an inappropriate comment…

Valkyr's ripline fires into the ceiling and jolts both of them upwards, before Valkyr cuts it and fires another one to further along, causing them to swing quite dramatically…

Thousands of confused pairs of eyes watch as their 'lunch' swings from glowing line to glowing line along the ceiling… thousands of heads swivel to follow them; tracking their every move… predicting where they will land, their trajectories and their nutritional value… and then Isaac – who has borrowed Antonio's Penta - 'accidentally' puts a grenade into the largest cluster of infested. Resulting in a beautiful explosion and a significant distraction from the hivemind's calculations.

The lights go out… again.

I immediately turn my helmet torches on and look for the black warframe-wearing figure… I don't see him… not good.

"Oops, sorry. Wrong switch." Comes the half amused announcement from Loki… as the lights come back on. Just in time to allow us to see Valkyr gracelessly hurl Antonio at the remaining section of bridge – where he lands, face first. I can't help but assume it was something inappropriate he said.

She swings back on the same ripline and returns at about twice the speed… Antonio meanwhile fills the air with arcs of electricity and the smoke of burning flesh as the infested charge him… soon all we can see is flashes of light in a grey cloud of singed-ness that is slowly spreading out from where he landed…. It looks like a miniature thundercloud has taken residence on the bridge, directly around Antonio. We can see infested charging into the cloud… but nothing emerges except faint tendrils of smoke and more flashes of electricity.

Valkyr lands in a crouch in front of Isaac and offers him her hand.

"I'm not going to get thrown, am I?" Asks Isaac, jokingly.

"Only if you come out with something as bad as your 'brother' just did." Is the amused reply as Valkyr once again hurtles towards the roof of the tank.

That leaves me alone on the circular platform around the colossal pillar and Loki somewhere unaccounted for on the ship… that guy needs to stop wandering off, it makes my job as unofficial commander very stressful… although, if he can make a habit of finding useful things in command centers and bridges I won't complain. I briefly wonder why what would normally be called the bridge on this vessel is actually a command center, but decide that I have more pressing concerns at the moment.

* * *

I'm still trying to figure out how the purely biological infestation has suddenly adapted to be able to interface with the purely mechanical Corpus proxies by the time Valkyr swings back for me. I take her hand, and I'm propelled into the air at an uncomfortably rapid pace, before she cuts the line and we drop, only to be jerked back upwards a millisecond later as the next line connects. I have already decided that I don't like this form of travel… Next time I'm keeping at least one bridge intact.

We land fairly gracefully, due to not making inappropriate comments I'm not thrown face first but instead deposited gently on the small piece of bridge still clinging to the other side of the tank. There is a fairly thick layer of smoke covering the ground to about knee height, but the smoke is still fairly high further along the corridor where Antonio is doing his thing. I can see scorch marks on the walls all the way along which means he probably decided to go for overkill…

Irrelevant, I usher Valkyr into the corridor and then tell Loki to open the vents between the tanks. Sure enough, we hear a hissing sound in the distance and then we hear the screams. Lots of screams.

It turns out the hivemind literally shares consciousness's with each and every infested life form… which means it was just hit by the experience of millions of cells of the grey passive flesh being hit by hydrochloric acid… fairly concentrated hydrochloric acid. And this agony is experienced by every member of the hivemind – which is why all of a sudden the infested in front of us are screaming as well and writing on the ground in agony. Antonio ceases to vaporize them and instead switches to stabbing them – more efficient.

I seal the safe-guard door on this side of the tank and we walk on between the sea of screaming infested and trembling tumors that coat the walls… they aren't even attacking us they're in so much pain!

 _I'll remind you_

"What?"

 _You were thinking if it would be possible to do this with other infested colonies in future, and I said I would remind you._

"I thought you liked the infested?"

 _Yea, but seeing them all in so much agony is still fairly endearing… I'm kinda turned on right now…_

"I did not need to know that Beta… also, seriously? Are you getting aroused by infested? You have issues…"

 _Hey, they scream. And I like screams. A lot…_

"You're fucked up…"

 _Ah well, you're kinda stuck with me so you might as well get used to it_

I don't even bother to reply, so he quickly redirects his attention to organizing Ruk's forces for another assault. I can't help but wonder though… Are the others enjoying the screaming in that way? I mean, I like the idea of my enemies screaming rather than my allies… but being turned on by it? I wonder if Valkyr is enjoying it… I kinda hope she isn't. I don't want her to be like that…

We press on regardless as the screaming infested continue to writhe around us, and so by the time we reach the reactor room I'm almost bored… So naturally fate throws in something to alleviate the boredom.

"Tenno, oh Tenno. It soo good to see you again!" Comes Alad V's voice over some sort of speaker…

I can already see the others have heard it too, mainly by the fact that Valkyrs energy claws have reformed and she's trembling with rage… but silently.

"I did wonder when you'd arrive, Tenno. I would sooo love to meet you again, unfortunately I'm a busy man. I have an empire to organize. But I left a friend for you. Go on through, she's waiting for you in the reactor room." Comes Alad's voice…

"That doesn't sound good…" remarks Loki. Valkyr, meanwhile, has calmed herself marginally… I think. But she's already moving towards the door. We all move towards it. I happen to be closer so I'm the first through the door, it costs me.

The first three shots remove my shields and the other seven punch through weak points in my warframe, crippling me before I even have a chance to scream. I drop to the floor as my vision darkens, but immediately I see Valkyr hurdle over me, claws drawn, followed by Antonio. Isaac stops and I see the healing nanites pour from his downturned palm. I sense them entering the gaping holes in my warframe and beginning to repair the armour and the flesh beneath. Isaac staggers as a high velocity shot bounces off his iron skin, but it doesn't seem to harm him.

The nanites finish their work and I shoot to my feet, braton prime already drawn and tracking. But then I stop in surprise.

The shooter. The 'she' that Alad mentioned. She is a warframe, a Mesa. She's tenno?

She may be tenno, but that apparently isn't discouraging Valkyr from trying to rip her arms off… and Antonio is slumped against the reactor bleeding profusely… Isaac hurries over to Antonio and I jerk myself into motion, firing a burst from my braton. I catch her completely off guard and remove her shields. I fire another two rounds, taking out both her knees before Valkyr tackles her again.

The Mesa bucks and grapples with Valkyr with a surprising amount of success… by which I mean she doesn't die in seconds. In fact, she even manages to throw Valkyr off, again. By this stage though her torso is covered in gashes, and that, combined with two bullet holes that have rendered her legs unable to support her, is clearly taking its toll on her.

That's when I notice; she is wearing a collar just like the one we saw on Alad!

I step in front of Valkyr – normally a very bad idea, but at the moment Valkyr has taken so many rounds she can barely resist – and indicate for her to stand down. Then I attempt to connect to the Mesa. Nothing.

I bring my braton to my shoulder and put a few rounds into the collar around her neck. Being a fairly bulky thing it takes several shots before it comes off. Then I try to connect again. I sense… something…

"Can you hear me?" I demand.

Silence. Valkyr is already healing and looks ready to attack again…

"If you can hear me, respond or I will be forced to kill you on the assumption that you are a rogue tenno."

Silence.

"Last chance to speak."

"w… wait." The telepathic speech is so quiet I almost miss it. She can't be that weakened, surely? Most tenno are perfectly capable of speech even after being riddled with plasma or bullets.

"Are you OK?" I know it sounds like a stupid question bearing in mind I just shot her –several times - and then Valkyr ripped her chest to pieces, but I mean it in the sense of psychologically rather than physically.

Silence.

I'm already beginning to wonder if I imagined the voice when she moves.

Antonio immediately begins charging an electric attack, but I beckon for him to stop.

The Mesa hauls herself to her knees and then bows her head. A sign of submission, but am I going to get any further communication from her?

"Alpha, kill it." Comes Lotus' voice, completely out of the blue.

"Sorry Lotus, please confirm. You said to kill her?"

"Correct. It is corrupted by the infestation; we cannot do anything. The Tenno she once was is dead. It is only a husk. I'm amazed its capable of speech…"

"Shouldn't we at least try?"

"No. We cannot risk bringing a live infestation form onto a relay full of humans."

"But if she was corrupted by the infestation she would be connected to the hivemind and she'd be screaming in agony. Are you sure she's infested?"

The Mesa hasn't moved, apparently she is content to await the result of my little debate with the Lotus… although she may not be able to hear it at all.

"Honestly Alpha, I am not sure she's infested. But I'm also not willing to risk the lives of the few hundred humans who have dared to stand up to the Grineer and Corpus by bringing her to the relay. Especially bearing in mind she is almost certainly infested, I just cannot be 100% sure without further scans."

"But if she can be saved, she would be a significant boost to our cause. It would be illogical to kill her, especially since she isn't exhibiting any signs of being infested."

"It SHOT you Alpha! It's not on our side, it has already proven that by its actions. Now kill it, destroy the reactor and get out of there. And remember pick up Loki on your way out, that guy is stressing me out with his incessant getting lost…"

"She was being controlled Lotus, it was the collar. She had no control over her actions, I'm sure of it."

"Alpha, I know you don't remember everything about being a Tenno, but even you should know that nothing can control a tenno. IF it was controlled then it is not tenno, merely infested flesh within a warframe. Now kill it and get moving, this ship is going to impact the blockade in about 30 minutes."

"How can you be certain that nothing can control a Tenno? And how is that scientific grounds for executing her?"

"Alpha. Don't argue with me, just shoot it and get out of there."

I'm considering my options when inspiration strikes: This conflict is non-beneficial, but I see a lot of potential in saving this Mesa warframe… and there just so happens to be a shadow-cloaked teleporter who has made it clear he opposes the Lotus and is willing to follow my commands…

I quickly search for his mind, he hasn't gone far and he's already reformed… that's impressive. Or maybe he had enough energy for revive. Void energy is miraculous…

I quickly connect to him and sense his brief surprise even through the mist.

"Brother, I need a favour. **Now**."

"Name it" he replies in a businesslike manner

"Abduct this Mesa, I wish to talk to her. Make it look like a kidnapping but do not harm her."

"Consider it done, just step back slightly"

I step back, momentarily confused. Which is fortunate, because it means the stun grenade misses me and hits Isaac in the chest – just as he was about to pull the trigger on Mesa! Instead the electricity arcs over his armour and he collapses in a smoking heap – unconscious for now…

Before I can recover Stalker lunges at me and I have to evade, I bring my exalted blade up but he waves a hand and it vanishes! He picks up the Mesa by the scruff of her neck and vanishes in a puff of black mist. All this happens in about 2 seconds, before the others can even react. We all stare at the spot where the Mesa had been kneeling in a state of shock… the others due to the whole 'rogue tenno appearing, knocking out Isaac and kidnapping a potentially tenno' thing… and I'm just in shock from the suddenness of it all. I hadn't realized he could teleport that quickly, or that quietly…

"Thank you." I whisper to him in my mind.

"What would you like me to do with her? She's unconscious but will awake soon…"

"For now just keep her safe, if you have to then restrain her but I'd prefer if you kept her free. We need her to trust us."

"Acknowledged. Shadow out." With that he's gone. I think I can still feel a faint connection to his mind though… now I will be able to find it at will, I hope.

I'm just glad that Beta wasn't here to see-

 _So that's what you're up to…_

Bugger, Beta reconnected in time to witness that.

"Beta, can I trust you not to tell anyone?"

 _Yes. I actually agree with you on this. There was no way the Lotus could have known that that Mesa was infested and even if she was we should have taken her to one of the many quarantine zones under the Lotus' control for study. She wanted her gone… why?_

"Your guess is about as good as mine… I guess we'll have to ask her ourselves. Mesa that is, not the Lotus."

 _Agreed. I won't say a word about this… I'd prefer to work with the all-powerful omnipresent goddess Lotus rather than against her… but on this matter I'm with you._

"Good"

I realise Valkyr is shaking me and snap out of psionic communicating mode to see what she wants.

"Are you OK?" She demands. She's already completely healed from the previous barrage she received. Impressive.

"Yea, just. Shaken. I didn't think he'd be back so quickly…" I'm pretending to be confused, and injecting a fair degree of shock into my voice. I don't like lying to a sister, especially Valkyr, but it's not like I can exactly confess my affiliation with the shadow-cloaked assassin…

"Me neither…" She admits… "That really caught us all off guard…"

"Yea…" I agree as I turn to survey the damage Antonio is doing to the reactor. Sure enough its visibly overheating and the others are all heading for the door carrying the colossal hunk of Isaac's armoured form… I join them, taking up a bit of the weight. The Rhino warframe is bloody heavy…

Which is how we end up looking like funeral procession by the time the Lotus reconnects to our feeds. Apparently Stalker hit her with something to jam her signal…

The others don't seem overly concerned at the abduction of the Mesa. I guess they think its preferable that she be kidnapped to them having to execute her, or maybe they think Stalker will kill her alone. Doesn't matter. While my brothers and sister are fairly unconcerned the Lotus is the exact opposite. I'm just ignoring her, but I can still hear her angry voice faintly in the back of my mind telling me that it's my fault the Mesa got away, that I should have shot her when I was ordered to. Just the usual. She'll calm down eventually.

Fortunately, Isaac wakes up before we even get back along the corridor. He awkwardly falls out of our hands and onto the floor and even before he rights himself he demands to know what happened.

"She got away" replies Antonio.

"Stalker kidnapped her" proposes Valkyr.

"Alad V is allied with Stalker and had him rescue her at the last moment as Alpha was about to shoot her" postulates Loki from somewhere, apparently he's made his way down to join us and is happily stabbing screaming infested with Antonio.

 _Actually, I think Loki is right._ Proclaims Beta to everyone. _It seems probable that this was a trap or a way of planting a traitor, one which Alpha wanted to exploit against Alad and the rogue tenno. Unfortunately, the Lotus messed it up. Alpha planned to take her back and then drop her in for interrogation so that we could learn more about Alad and the Stalker._

"Yes. That was roughly what I had in mind," I lie. "But I wasn't able to say so because she could have been connected to tenno frequencies and then she wouldn't have come willingly. And as we all witnessed she's a fairly capable opponent. Sorry, I had hoped you guys would play along."

"In that case I formally apologise. I was about to follow the Lotus' orders and kill her." Admits Isaac slightly sheepishly.

"Its fine, I would expect you to follow orders I had just hoped to turn the situation to our advantage. No hard feelings?"

"None."

"good. Now just to convince the Lotus to stop having a go at me…"

"Good luck" comes Antonio's voice from somewhere down the corridor.

I'm about to reply when we hear the reactor go critical. Throwing caution to the wind we all proceed to run for extraction, Isaac lags behind due to the weight of his armour, but its fine because there are only 4 airlocks so at least one person has to be gone well before he gets there so that his Liset can dock to pick him up.

We run past a few clusters of writhing infested, but the corridors are mostly clear over here… I have no complaints on that matter. The infested are still fairly repulsive in my mind.

We all reach the airlock room and I join the others in stepping into the airlocks. Isaac stands on a firm piece of floor and magnetizes his feet to prevent being blown out by the momentary decompression. I'm last to step into my Lisets rotary airlock, which means I am still turning into my Liset when I see Isaac get hit by an ancient's grappling hook and dragged across the floor towards it.

I immediately connect and ask him if he's fine, only to receive nothing. No communications at all. And that ancient looked really odd, even from a distance… never good.

I yell to Ordis to re-dock. He makes some sarcastic comment about me needing to make a list so I stop forgetting things, but obediently turns the Liset around. I psionically call out to the others and sense nothing. Not good!

The ship re-docks and I practically fly out of the airlock, only to be confronted with the sight of a colossal ancient that seems to have meshed with several sorts of construction tool. It has the standard magnetic aura of an ancient disruptor, but it also appears to have a row of circular sawblades along one arm. The other arm is wrapped around some sort of energy saw on a stick and seems to be interfacing with it. As I watch it begins to glow brighter and then the ancient brings it down on Isaac. His iron skin shatters off completely. That infested ancient is channeling?!

Without a second thought I shoot it. The first round bounces off a saw blade, but the rest hit home and rip out sections of flesh and muscle shredding the ancient in a matter of seconds. Isaac slowly stands, and brings his boltor prime to bear and then the air is filled with golden flechettes and the ancient is pinned to the wall… in several hundred little pieces.

Isaac goes over and retrieves the energy saw on a stick and then walks towards me. I tilt my head to the side and wait for him to explain, but he just takes my arm and directs me towards the airlocks. We both get in, check the other is secure and only then do we depart. We're going to have to be much more careful, or make smaller groups… That wasn't a particularly dangerous situation – I don't think… - but it has highlighted that a lone tenno can easily be picked off. As we head away from the infested Corpus supertanker I sense Isaac connecting to me.

"Thank you. You just saved my life."

"You couldn't have taken that ancient?"

"No, I could have, but it would have taken me too long."

I'm about to ask what he means when the supertanker crumples and fractures out into space. Components, modules, docked fighters and ships fly in all directions, some of them are held together by strands of infested sinew. That would be survivable, were it not for the sudden spike of radiation that rips into the rear sensors on our Lisets and almost completely destroys both ship's shields. That would be enough to kill any tenno ten times over… now I see what he meant.

The others have noticed our absence and come back to enquire as to what happened. Isaac briefly explains that I just 'heroically' returned at great risk to myself to save his life and so on… basically he makes me out to have taken a calculated decision and decided to potentially risk my life for him. Because one of the only ways to permanently kill a tenno is to expose them to an overdose of radiation because they cannot reform. If the radiation is left to dissipate then the tenno is generally alright, but radiation and an exploding ship? The supertanker is close enough to Jupiter now that there were enough gasses for a proper explosion, which comes a second later and blasts all five ships off course with its shockwave. That would have actually permanently killed Isaac… that's a slightly worrying thought.

The others agree with Isaac that I was a 'hero', but Valkyr seems especially impressed with my feat of 'heroism'… and I don't think admitting that I kinda forgot about the whole radiation permanently killing tenno thing is really appropriate anymore. Ah well, only several hundred more plague ships to deal with now… yay…

Fortunately, the massive chunks of supertanker actually end up swerving off and crashing into the other ships. Those that aren't immediately hit have to plough through the debris field and between that and the radiation a good 20 something smaller ships are destroyed. Which is when Beta finally announces his surprise to us.

 _I got us a present, could we all steer out of the way please?_

All of the ship cephalons redirect us in the direction Beta indicates, which means we're in the perfect position to watch as three Fomorian class Grineer warships come around the planet. Their central guns charge up in unison, and then with three simultaneous blasts they rip three Corpus vessels from existence. Each of those explodes violently and fills the upper atmosphere with more burning debris… and then the Fomorians fire again, and again… soon the atmosphere is layered in falling debris that is burning up on re-entry… the main guns pulse every second or so and every second another three infested Corpus ships perish. Within about five minutes the entire armada is gone. All that is left is burning shrapnel that falls towards the lower atmosphere… beautiful really.

The Fomorians head past us, they aren't exactly agile… but they are following some interesting navigation data Loki found for them. Namely the origin of these plague ships: Eris.

 **End of Chapter 13**


End file.
